We arrived so late last night we decided not to set an alarm for this morning and have a leisurely breakfast. It was nice. We are about 2 blocks from the Hangpu River which is where the Bund is. The Bund is the old British area and used to be docklands. The word bund is actually a Persian word for levee. There is a great river walk and we got some excellent shots of the amazing towers across river.
This is a pretty lighthouse on the bund. There are many up and down the rivers.
View from the river walk. The Pearl TV Tower on the left, and then the two tallest towers on the right side are the Shanghai World Financial Center (the one that looks like a bottle opener) and the tallest in China – the Shanghai Tower.
The Shanghai Tower finished in 2015 was the tallest building in the world from ground to highest usable level at 632 meters. Rules and details are important here because the Burj Khalifa in Dubai has a huge antenna-like tower that is not inhabitable space and therefore doesn’t count if you use the right rules. Shanghai Tower has the fastest elevators in the world with a maximum speed of 73.4 km/hr (we only did 10m/s) and under one minute to the top. The observation decks are on floor 118 and 119. Your ears sure do pop a couple times when you go up and down.
The building twists about one degree per floor to offset the power of the wind at the higher floors. There is also a wind generator at the top and the building collects rain water to be used in the toilets. For a monster tower it’s pretty green.
From the top you look down on everything!
Pretty Jing Mao building (which is a good sized building in its own right, completely dwarfed!)
A view from the bottom back up.
Our hotel is also notable as it’s known the as the Pineapple (can you see why?)
We also got some closer shots of the Pearl tower.
All in all some pretty amazing architecture.
As we were walking back to the ferry across the river we chanced upon an authentic Italian pizza place. The owner is even really Italian. It wasn’t quite Neapolitan level but it was darn good. Marco Polo would be proud.
Tomorrow we have a guide again and are touring Zhujiajiao water city.
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