This is the Qube hotel, six miles away from Pu Dong Airport in Shanghai. We slept there last night for about eight hours. We didn't eat breakfast. We didn't eat anything. We didn't leave the hotel except to return to the airport. We used the shower, slept, and absconded with the free bottles of water. Based on our experiences, we would highly recommend it.
Adam prides himself on planning out trip logistics in detail (and only infrequently speaking in the third person). In our original travel itinerary, we would have paid US$16 to use a lap pool at the Beijing Airport Hilton on a five-hour layover after flying Air China first class from San Francisco. Then we would have flown to Singapore, and taken the metro to Bugis Junction for durian pancakes and bubble tea for breakfast. We would get free massages in the Bangkok airport before the final flight to Vientiane.
Alas, instead we arrived very tired into Shanghai, and missed the hotel shuttle to the Qube, where we had a reserved room.
Lesson: planning takes time, and there's always something missing. Neither of us had called the Qube to arrange a pick-up. We knew when the shuttle ran, but not where it stopped.
The very cold and rainy Shanghai night was a little too familiar. We stored our luggage (45 RMB) and hopped on the Shanghai Metro for a four-stop trip to Changsua Road for 4 RMB each. We alighted into the pouring rain and a cold wind, but luckily the hotel was a visible skyscraper about 300 yards away.
The hotel was nice. Shanghai was dark. We were full after eating frequently on our flight, and we would eat again at breakfast in the airport lounge the next morning. (Adam tried congee for the first time. He likes to believe that the brown loaves were tofu, but Bethany guesses pork sausage.)
Things we learned about Shanghai: it's dark and cold in winter evenings, the luggage storage upstairs opens at 6:00 AM, and the Qube is a nice hotel. We'll have to return, but in warmer months.
Onward.
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