Friday 29 March Shanghai

I’ve had a day of rest, cancelled my tour and sent George off on his own!  The tour included some places we’d already been so I didn’t feel bad about not going.  I did, however, miss lunch at the Oriental Pearl Tower which is the pink tower in the pics I posted earlier.  Instead I caught up with some domestics, had a late breakfast and then lunch on the pool deck.  Met a lovely couple from Los Angeles and am sure we’ll keep in touch.  Funny who you meet and who you gel with. Another couple from Portland, Oregon, are great, too, we’ve had a good rapport over the past 4 days.  Saw them at lunch, she said ‘what do you drink Maureen?’ When I said ‘anything’ she said ‘right! we need to have a girls afternoon tomorrow and have a good chat!!!! ‘. All good for a laugh, and no, I don’t drink ‘anything’!!! I was wearing a Columbia polar fleece jacket yesterday & they said Columbia is a Portland owned company where their son works and so they get lots of freebies.  Have just been sitting on the balcony watching an amazing array of boats pass by - mostly container barges but also some larger  and a few pleasure boats. I waved a couple of times but no response so guess thats not allowed.  A guy just poked his head around from the next suite and introduced himself as Stephen.  Asked where he was from - Melbourne.  Turns out we know his sister very well, G knew his dad through business and  his wife is a friend of Lyn.  Small world.  Sat with a couple from near Düsseldorf Germany at dinner, were able to have a table with a wonderful view of the skyscrapers.  We sailed at 8 pm and are now en route to Tianjin, the port for Beijing.  Yes, we’re going back there but Tianjin is quite a distance from downtown Beijing so we’ll  do a local tour there.  I went to the show billed as ‘International virtuoso pianist Liana Forest’.  She is a Russian lady now living in San Francisco and she played classical and popular to Broadway & Boogie music and was very good.