Leaving Shanghai around 4 pm on a Sunday afternoon we needed to take a train northwest to the city of Changzhou. Changzhou is city of 4.5 million people that houses one of our partner’s offices.
We were told that we would be staying at a Howard Johnson. Howard Johnson?
The picture above is how most Americans remember Howard Johnson’s. The restaurant chain is basically gone, but I guess there are a few hotels owned by Wyndham.
The hotel surprised us as it seemed very nice. The room wasn’t big but nicely appointed. We were dead tired from the train ride, but mostly because we walked 8 miles seeing the sites of Shanghai.
We found a hotel restaurant and with a little issue of language we finally got something to eat. The one thing you can trust in the world is pointing to a picture gets you the item. Not this time. We had some hot soup which Mary Ann accidentally poured on herself. Regardless of the language barrier they were able to give her some burn cream that really did the job!
We set the thermostat to 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees F) before we left for dinner but the temperature did not move from 28 or 29 degrees Celsius. The thermostat was in English and Chinese, so it shouldn’t have been that hard to figure out. As mentioned in the “Tricky Thermostats” blog, Cam warned us that hotels controlling the temperature is not uncommon. We slept a little warm but in the morning we discovered the windows opened up and had no screens.
We did not get a Executive Club Room, but they did have a nice, big, breakfast buffet. Just as good.
You could always have good Chinese food or any type of continental breakfast item. This was normal in every hotel we were in. Our Chinese partners did a great job booking those hotels for us.