TRINITY ACRES: 2025 - April 1-4

At the very last minute we received our pretty Yuan, Chinese money.. Aragorn deals with the sales of x-ray tubes from a leading manufacturer in China. But life is weird as Trump put in ridiculous tariffs while we were gone. It did not ruin our trip but might ruin this part of business. Feel free to say a 54 day Rosary novena.... although the tariffs will mess severely with our business it will affect everyone. EVERYONE.

A friend made me several "secret rosary" bracelets. China is a communist country. You are free to believe what you want to believe so long as you adhere to their communist agenda.

April 1st we left for Chicago at 4. I do get a kick out of sanitizing remotes. We stayed at Wyndham O'Hare as they also offer extended parking and a free shuttle to and from the airport.

We ate at Sultan Mediterranean and had Beef Shawerma. It was delicious.

There were gale warnings in the windy city of Chicago but we went to the airport anyway. Thank you for all those who offered safe travel prayers. We had very smooth travels. We left our hotel at 5:30 am with rain and lightning.

No problem with kiosk check-in and the ladies who had to then give us travel approval.

We made it through TSA pre-check without getting frisked. We left Chicago an hour and 15 minutes late due to weather. They made up some time but we still had to walk fast to get to our gage. It was nice as we had 4 seats in a row for the 2 of us. Nice to spread out a bit.

We just made it to the international gate in time for pre-boarding. We were on planes for forever. The movie selection was huge but mostly icky. Naturally I chose a Lord of the Rings marathon.

First flight was 4-1/2 hours to San Francisco, Califonia. Nothing like getting close and cozy with other jets.

The second flight from SFO to Shanghai PVG China was 13-1/2 hours.

You'll learn that we ate alot during this trip. Here is our first meal. Don't envy our plane food.

This was above Japan *snap* wanted to see that!

smog

some rice patties of China. It was crazy trying to figure out what time it was and how far ahead of home we were. We flew up towards Alaska but it was very overcast. We saw no darkness but it was daylight the entire trip so we had to leave our shades down most of the ride so people could sleep or watch movies.

Somewhere the date changed to April 3rd. We had to fill out an arrival card. Our planes were Boeing 777s.

Lots of boats

Chinese security is really something. We had to be fingerprinted... every finger... and have a face match. Then the left hand a second time when we got to security in person. They have laws about coming into the country with illness. They even have a quarantine area and an infirmary. Subject to the law if you don't tell him of any symptoms.

We were the obvious tourists wandering around looking for a shuttle bus. We ended up taking a taxi for 31 yuan $4.24. 😂 I didn't get a photo of the airport as it didn't seem advisable since there were guards everywhere. But it was beautiful and immaculately clean. There were pretty red lights and gold danglies. They like lights!

Hotel

American food in Chinese

Fancy toilet

We can't drink the water in China so hotels provide bottle water.

We could drink tea

Our first dinner was Chinese stir fry, crab, pork, shirmp and chamomile tea. We took some melatonin before going to sleep in hopes that we would be able to get on the new schedule quickly. 13 hours ahead of CST.

BWAHAHA, sign in shower Caution wet floor.

Lots of rules in China hotel these were funny

Fire emergency kit.

View out our hotel in Shanghai.

handy flashlight

I was sleeping and waking all night but forced myself to sleep at 4:30 am China time I could sleep no more (3:30 pm CST).

We had a breakfast buffet at 6 am. Interesting array of foods: Chinese noodles, smoked salmon, to everything, crescents, bread, skippy peanut butter in Chinese, tofu in soy sauce and rice vinegar and odd crunchies. They had cereal, I had to try the ones that look like chinese chow mein noodles.

We walked around outside for a bit but there wasn't really anywhere to go. Not much to do and had to wait until 11:30 to eat lunch. At 12:30 out ride to Hangzhou was coming.

For lunch we got pizza.

Not sure what that is, probably not a green scapular

We couldn't take the train to Hangzhou because it was a holiday and full so we took a taxi to Hangzhou. It was supposed to be 2-1/2 to 3 hours but was 5 hours due to said festival days "Qingming" and "Jie Zitui"

Lots of Teslas

Our driver was getting tired and there were some near misses so Tom said he had to go to the bathroom. The guy called a translator. So we could get out. And hopefully the driver could get a second wind. There were no toilets at the police check. I have a squatty-pottle phobia but thankfully they had a handicap toilet. I was handicapped, even if it was squatty-potty-phobia handicapped. And no one can ever laugh at me for bringing along travel toilet paper rolls

Lots of tunnels through the mountains/hills

All these buildings are apartments. They are everywhere and look like dominos everywhere. They are about 30-40 stories high with 4 apartments per floor.