Peace Man

I know that you are dying to know, where did you stay in Shanghai? Go ahead and admit it; you can’t wait to find out. So I won’t torture you any further and tell you that we stayed at the Peace Hotel in Shanghai. I know that this won’t mean much to you so I offer you a chance to find out more about the Peace Hotel at this link; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_Hotel.

In case you don’t want to check, I’ll drop a few facts about the Peace Hotel on you. The Peace Hotel is a Shanghai landmark and it is on several of the Top 10 lists of things to do in Shanghai. It is located on the end of East Nanjing Road (Shanghai’s Walking Street) and is next to the Huangpu River waterfront. Many famous and important people have stayed at this hotel and now the Dudley name has been added to the long list of dignitaries that have spent time at this hotel.

How did we (the little people) gain access to this hotel? Well, Tammy knows people and was able to use her connections to get us a room and gold level access to the hotel. Otherwise, I don’t think we stood a chance of staying at this hotel. Anyhow upon our arrival at the hotel, we indicate that we are looking for the Gold Level check-in (after all we didn't want to be associated with the normal rif-raf). The lady behind the desk asks our names and once she verifies the information, she escorts us to the elevators and takes us up to the 9th floor to check-in. We walk off the elevator with our backpacks, shorts and t-shirts probably looking more like the cleaning crew (from the street since the cleaning people at the hotel were pretty nicely dressed) than important guests but they treated us like we were superstars or something. They checked us in and explained the hotel amenities to us and then the butler showed us to our room. The butler, Charlie, was dressed in a tuxedo with tails (seriously, tails) and he showed us that we had to use our room card to use the elevator to get to the floors where we needed to go. He showed us to our room and then offered us a welcome drink called the Fairmont 29. It was a Prosecco (sparkling Italian wine) with cranberry juice. The Peace Hotel is part of the Fairmont chain of hotels (hence the Fairmont) and the Peace Hotel was completed in 1929 (you guessed it, the ’29 portion of the name). It was an okay drink, I’m not much of a wine person but they went through the trouble to make it so I at least tasted it (several times). He left us to look around and consider the surroundings of the hotel. The bathroom was large and contained an old style 4-leg bathtub, the bed was huge and soft (you kind of sunk into the bed & pillows when you laid down on the bed), the décor was very old style and all-in-all, it was a super room. We had our own single-serving expresso machine and a mini-bar, super soft bath robes and just huge, soft towels. It was everything we had imagined and more. For the gold level status, we had access to the 9th floor lounge. We would eat breakfast in the lounge, had afternoon tea/coffee options and hors devours in the evening. The lounge remained open until 10:00pm.

Allow me to describe the lounge options in more detail. For breakfast, there was a large spread put out to eat. First, there was a chef there to make our eggs to order, omelet, scrambled, whatever you wanted. Then there were the Asian options, dumplings and a few other items (like steamed veggies & noodles, salmon). For the Western breakfast was bacon (crispy bacon….man how I missed crispy bacon), sausage, oven roasted potatoes, fresh fruits (raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, pineapple, dragonfruit, cantaloupe, etc.), small muffins (blueberry, chocolate, plain, frosted peach, wheat), small fruit Danish (kiwi, peach, raspberry, strawberry, plain) banana bread, fruitcake (no mistaking that), some cereals and a German meat and cheese section. Not to be overlooked was the options for juice (freshly squeezed/juiced…of course), orange, carrot, apple-watermelon, and apple. And of course, freshly ground & brewed Italian coffee. I mean, we walked around just staring at all of the options. We were there between 9:15 and 9:30 in the morning so we were the late comers to breakfast but we only saw three other couples eating there. I have to tell you, it was delicious! I had eggs both mornings, nothing like eggs in the morning (especially ones that you don’t have to cook yourself). So that was just the breakfast, they had two televisions on, CNN and BBC were on the TVs and there was plenty of reading options both in Chinese and English. We sat down in our queen anne chairs at our table and ate our luxury breakfast with someone there to check on you every 5 minutes.

The afternoon tea consisted of tea (duh!), coffee or juice. Along with this were several small snack items. More fruit, Danish, dark chocolate tarts and a chocolate mousse topped with fresh berries. It was too much. I normally don’t drink too much coffee since it can lead me to get the shakes but I had to try it. This time, they scalded the milk for us to give us the expresso feel. So you add in a bunch of sugar from the chocolate and I was sweating later on with the sugar/caffeine rush.

The hors d’oeuvres for the evening “snack” consisted of a few dishes from the restaurants in the hotel. So we had cashew chicken, coconut shrimp and fancy fish sticks from the Dragon & Phoenix restaurant. Plus you had option for tea, coffee, beer, wine or other spirits. We chose the beer (we are Americans damnit! We love our beer!) along with a little of each dish to taste what is served in the restaurants. The fancy fish sticks were a little “fishy” for us but the other items were great! The funny thing was that everyone seemed to know what we were drinking despite them not being there when you picked the drink. We could’ve even open our own beers but service was what they were there for (despite the fact that it was just us).

In the main lobby of the hotel, after 5:00pm there was a three string ensemble playing classical music to relax you and remind you that this isn’t Kansas anymore Toto. The doorman were very polite and security personnel were there at every entrance to ensure that only guests made it into the hotel. Otherwise there would have been a lot of locals going in and out of the hotel all day long to take photos (not that I would blame them).

On Thursday, we asked to see the view from the rooftop of the hotel. We had heard many things about the view and wanted to see it for ourselves. I took many (many) photos from the rooftop since you could see the Pudong district across the river. You could see around the bend of the river, a view you could not see from ground level. When we got on top of the roof, we found that we were above many of the other rooftops for surrounding hotels and had a super view of the area. It was simply amazing and hard to describe what we could see. It was just a great view up and down the river. The only thing we missed was photos from the rooftop at night. They had a party on the roof so we weren’t granted access to see the view. However, we did get some really good photos from the previous evening so although it was disappointing, it wasn’t a total loss.

The Peace Hotel is also known for the Jazz Bar. Unfortunately for us, we didn’t know the Jazz bar required reservations so by the time we found out, it was too late. So, we “settled” for the calm, quiet of the Cin Cin Lounge (a drink and cigar bar in the hotel). It was a very nice place to sit, have a drink and reflect on the day. As with all of the other places, the staff were extremely accommodating. How accommodating were they?!? It was a little chilly in the lounge and Tammy was rubbing her shoulders and giving the “brrr” routine. One of the waiters came out a door and saw her and turned right around and went back in the door. A moment later he comes out with a shawl for her to put on to stay warm. How many places would do that? We took the chance to try some different beers, I tried the Australian Redback beer. It had a similar flavor to a German Heffeweisen but was clear and not cloudy like a typical Weiss beer. It was a very good beer. Tammy had a German Hefiweisen which was very good as well. We sat and talked (imagine that) for a couple of hours before we headed back to the room for the night. It was enjoyable to just sit and know that we didn’t have to be home or have anyone waiting on us.

Of course, we return to the room to find that the turndown service had everything ready for us to crash for the evening. It was something that we are not accustomed to and although it would be nice to have that done all of the time, it isn’t who we are. I can see how perhaps people can get used to this treatment but there is a downside to that. You begin to accept that you are entitled (read better than others) and forget that the people that provide the service are people as well. We would say hello to all around the hotel from the maids to the guys standing in the halls to help you with anything you needed. Some seemed a little surprised when we would allow them into the elevator with us or we would say good afternoon or whatever. I mean we had one of the ladies apologize for not knowing our names although she had never met us. One of the young girls in the Cin Cin apologized for pouring the beer wrong. It was so odd for us; we’re just people like them. Like I said, it was nice but it’s not like we’ll be staying here again so we enjoyed it while it lasted (our 15 seconds of fame).