Shanghai, China - Arrival (Day 1)

Today is Saturday, March 10.  We are at sea today on our way from Shanghai to Hong Kong.  We began a two-day visit to Shanghai on Thursday with an early morning cruise up the Huangpu River.  I set the alarm for 5:30 a.m. and was out on the Explorer forward deck by 6.  (It never fails to surprise me that no matter how early I get up to take photos, there are always a good number of people out there ahead of me.)  The weather was very cold (40 degrees, compared to Manila's 85-90 degrees), dreary and overcast with most buildings shrouded in fog or mist.

The ride up the river was fascinating in so many ways.  On our previous visit to Shanghai, as part of our land-based (for the most part) China trip in 2011, we became familiar with a portion of this river since our hotel was across the street from it as well as the famous Bund that runs along it in what was the old financial district of Shanghai.  From that vantage point the view across the river is of the dazzling array of high rise buildings in the very modern Pudong district.  But we had no idea what this river offers in terms of access from and to the sea, shipbuilding and maritime commerce.  It is generally very wide, so much so that at many points several vessels, usually barges, are moored in tandem in the middle of the river.  From the time I got out to the forward deck and for the next hour and a half as we cruised to our docking position, I was simply amazed by all the goings on.

To begin with, there are endless displays of China's coast guard and navy hardware, including some very modern, hi-tech looking ships.  One of the lecturers aboard ship the last several weeks is a British rear admiral.  He was out on the forward deck as well explaining what each vessel was and how state-of- the-art the vast majority of them seemed to be.  There were so many of them tied up along the way that I naively asked him if pretty much China's entire Navy was right here in this river.  He laughed and assured me this was but a small part.

  

We seemed to pass endless numbers of shipbuilding drydock facilities.

   

We also cruised past vessels of all sorts and sizes and shapes.

  

Eventually, we came to this bridge.

 

Just beyond it, in the distance, we could see the skyline that became so familiar to us on our last visit here.  Because of the weather, unfortunately it didn't present as its usual gleaming self.

   

Eventually we made our way to the port terminal which lies just slightly north of the intersection of Nanjing Road and the Bund, which is the location of the Fairmont Peace Hotel where we stayed on our last visit.  There are interesting looking buildings landside of the port terminal location that we couldn't help but notice as we tied up.

Our first major activity of the day was a Jewish Heritage tour.  I'll blog about that in a separate post.