When you fly quite a bit like I do you get to know airports by their codes. Therefore, the title of this post SFO to PVG makes a lot of sense to me. You can probably easily figure out that SFO is San Francisco, but what is PVG?
PVG is the IATA (International Air Transport Association) code for the Shanghai Pudong International Airport. The older airport in Shangha is SHA which is what you would expect for an airport in Shanghai. When the new Pudong airport was opened in 1999 they needed a new code as the old airport is still in operation. I am not sure exactly why they inserted a ‘V’ in the code, but perhaps they didn’t want to have PUD or PUG as a code.
So now that we know what PVG stands for, here are a few images from my days of travel. I left SFO on Friday and arrived at PVG on Saturday.
Here is the Boeing 787 that I would be flying on. It was brought to the gate much later than planned and our flight was delayed by almost two hours. Evidently some earlier delays caused a gate shortage. Hmm….
Luckily I was able to get a free upgrade. That end of the year flight to Los Angeles and back to keep my 1K status paid off with this flight. See: There and Back
I have some nice leg room for the long flight, and of course a seat that later would lie flat for some good sleep along the way.
I usually do not have a window seat when I fly, but I was not going to complain too much since I was in Business Class. This gave me the opportunity to take a few pictures as we took off and headed out over the Pacific Ocean.
Here you can see downtown San Francisco peeking over the South San Francisco hills.
Here is the Pacific coast line as we headed out over the water. It was a cloudy day, but there were enough gaps in the clouds for a nice picture.
It was soon meal time and I had a nice bowl of Spicy Chicken with a curry sauce as part of my nice meal.
After watching a couple of movies it was time to get some sleep. Before long it was time to wake up for a very late breakfast before arrival. We arrived at about dinner time in Shanghai 🙂
After making it through immigration and customs it was time for the taxi ride to the hotel. As usual it was fun trying to get the taxi driver to understand where my hotel was. I had it all mapped out on my phone, but I guess I should have included the name of the hotel in Chinese. The taxi coordinator at the airport looked it up on his phone and finally the taxi driver knew where he was going.
Finally I made it to the hotel and got checked into a very familiar looking hotel room. I have stayed in this hotel quite a few times over the years. I fell asleep in the chair reading a book, but thankfully woke up before too long and got a good night of sleep in a comfortable bed.
Now for a recovery day before a busy week of training.
Steven
Braman's Wanderings 