Shanghai Here We Come!

I’ll struggle to put my excitement into words for this blog, but here goes……..

OH MY GOD I’M GOING TO SHANGHAI ! ! ! ! ! !

Yes this was the line that came sprinting out of my chops on Saturday when my Chinese Visa finally turned up after a somewhat rushed process at both my end and at the supplier end.

My manager called me up a couple of weeks back and offered me the trip of a lifetime, and in fairness I was all set to turn it down because of the fact I have a little boy now who at the time of the trip will be just 3 months old. What kind of parent would I be disappearing to China for a week right?

Wrong. My wife almost went ballistic at me for even thinking about turning it down! Her passion for travel is just as strong as mine. She actually walked The Great Wall several years ago and toured Beijing for a few days, so knew the draw of China, and how it would be “idiotic” in her words to pass up on the opportunity.

So after a chat with her and my family (to make sure they could help out with the baby in my absence), I accepted the trip! Wuhoo!

So what I am going to be doing there?

Well the trip, run by our ground supplier in Asia; Wendy Wu Tours, will see me fly out to Shanghai on Saturday morning, landing Sunday, and staying a mixture of nights in Shanghai and a city to the west named Suzhou, which I have never heard of, but looks amazing, with additional tours each day, which I will list below for your envious viewing pleasure.

The idea is to assess the suitability of this potential tour for our cruise clients when we link it with a cruise departing Shanghai, which has two ports ideal for cruise ships, and has seen the likes of Royal Caribbean depart from it’s shores.

This idea of ‘opening up the world’ is the brain child of our marketing team at Cruise.co.uk, which links these wonderful tours onto cruise and land holidays, with the idea of showing our clients areas of the world that they wouldn’t ordinarily think about when looking at cruising.

The likes of China, Australia, South America among others, are ripe for this type of holiday, and we are at the front of the pack when it comes to combining these trips with our cruise deals.

Anyway, enough plugging, I know you guys want to know what I am going to see next week whilst I’m there, so here is a brief run down of some of the hopefully stunning sights I’ll see:

Shanghai City

The Bund

Travel on the Maglev Train

Humble Administrators Garden

The Lingering Garden

Grand Canal

Yu Gardens

Silk Museum

Shanghai Museum

Huangpu River Cruise – this I can’t wait for!

Phew!! What a trip eh?!

As you can see, this is truly an amazing tour, to a city I’ve always wanted to visit but never thought I would! Or not before I retired anyway!

I am bubbling with excitement and cannot wait for Saturday to board that plane.

I’ll be taking the tour with a friend and colleague of mine, Lee, who also works in the sales team here, so once you’ve read about my experiences when I return, make sure you check out his thoughts too – we may perceive it differently, so I know my own clients would love to get two different opinions on the place.

But I’ll leave you for now as I still have packing to do! Wish me luck as I go into the unknown!!

Shanghai Here We Come!!

Thanks for reading and as always, until next time….