Do I wanna see the sun blotted out from the sky? (I want to paint it, paint it, paint it black!)

I'm trying to decide whether to check out the total solar eclipse in China.

Pluses:
- It's very long, so the darkness should be especially intense
- The next accessible one isn't till 2017 (it's in the US), and it's a shorter eclipse.
- It's easy for me to take a week off now, and it may not be easy later.

Minuses:
- Shanghai weather often includes lots of clouds and haze.  It could be very blah-looking.
- I'm doing all this last-minute so it will either be sloppy or pricey.  (Round trip tickets to Shanghai are around $900, but finding a hotel and getting to the best spot at the last minute could be crazy expensive.)  

If someone reading this is already going, has a trip planned out, and is willing to let me (and potentially a friend or two) glom on, I'm much more likely to go.   

I am trying to get a sense for the experience of the eclipse.

I'm sure YouTube videos don't do it justice, but they look amazing even on a little window.  Here's a time lapse of a total solar eclipse from the ground. They're very fast -- just a couple of minutes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtuzVWCo-bQ

This one is more impressive -- it's a video taken from the air near the Arctic Circle, so the sun is low and the effect is especially intense.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGTGfpiX18s

What I should really do is find a very good writer who's seen one.

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Separately, a friend of mine is interested in doing an aurora trip this fall.  I'm into that too.