So now we finish our trip with two days to ourselves to do what we like and explore Shanghai at our own pace. As it turns out our pace is pretty slow, almost stationary and after nearly 4 busy weeks of doing stuff we decided to take some time out and rest. So there is very little to tell you about our first day off, we watched some movies, went for a little walk around the block, investigated the hotel complex, played on the Internet, but mostly we relaxed.

This next day was a bit for active as we did have one thing one our minds which we wanted to do with our time before we left and that was visit the highest observation deck in the world; the 100th floor of the Shanghai World Financial Centre (SWFC). We decided we wanted to try and see the city in daylight and all lit up at night, so we headed over there at about 3.30 with the plan of waiting around until it got dark. We entered the extremely modern building and we were led gently by staff to the pre elevator room to watch a short introduction about the building. It was built in 2008 and looks like a giant bottle opener at the top. The side of the building slopes like the side of a knife, which faces Beijing, not sure if that’s symbolic or just a coincidence. We got in to the lift and was incredibly suprised to find that we zipped up 94 floors in 66 seconds! And it didn’t really feel liked we’d moved at all, very weird. It was excellent watching the floor counter going so fast, it felt like we were in Willy Wonkers great glass elevator. At the 94 floor we went up a couple of escalators to the 97 floor then to another lift up the last 3 floors to the top. Once we arrived we immediately noticed the glass sections of he floor which certianly made our knees feel weird! The view was incredible, every other building looked tiny compared to how they look from the ground. We could see the river bend round and boats trundle past. We could see little cars and tiny people milling around like a toy set. It was spectacular.

Although the view was fantastic it was proving difficult to stay until the sunset until we found somewhere to buy tea and popcorn, then the time flew and we got a spectacular view of the Shanghai night lights. Every building was lit up and glowing, the whole scene seemed to change as it got darker from dark blues to blacks and then all shades of neon.

Finally we managed to jump in a taxi and headed back to the hotel, on the way we grabbed some fast food and bunkered in for the night. In the morning we’re flying back home, really looking forward to getting back and seeing Dexter (our dog), oh and our family and friends!

So as the title says we now head on to our final China location: Shanghai. We arrived just after midday and met our last guide Tom (Liam and I think he looks like Jet Li, but we’re not gonna take a swing for him just in case).
We went straight to the resturant where we had our own chef cooking at the table and the food was great. After eating we headed for the city centre and had a drive about. Shanghai is very different from all of the other places we have visited even the big cities like Beijing or Xi’an, it’s all very new with the East side of the river (now half the city) just 15 years old. One of the buildings, the Shanghai World Financial Centre, is the 3rd highest building in the world (or so I read) and has the highest observation deck (100th floor), which we are hoping to visit on our free day on Friday. I think it will be a fitting way to say goodbye to China.

From the east side of the river we looked over at the famous Bund, “Shanghai’s Wall Street”. It’s a great view across the river at the mix of different design styles as France, UK and the USA have left their mark with their own architecture in the buildings. After this we took a drive to the former French Concession, which is now a collection of bars and resturants all with distictly French style facades. But it was too early to go drinking so we headed to the Yu Yuan Gardens, which is actually a giant shopping area. We did some shopping in the flea market which had all kinds of great stuff, old and new (I went around the place singing Portobello Road from Bedknobs and Broomsticks and it was quite like that to be honest).

The evening held an acrobatics performance, but really it was more of a variety show. There were bendy girls making human pyramids, blokes fliping through hoops, plate spinning and the finale was some nutters riding motorbikes around a cage at each other. It was quite odd, but very entertaining.

The next day we took a trip to the nearby city of Suzhou where we visited another beautiful garden followed by a boat cruise down the city’s canal network before climbing a hill to the Leaning Pagoda. The pagoda is over 1000 years old and has quite a pronounced lean, it’s also been struck by lightning 7 times and survived the cultural revolution while surrounding temples burned, so I hope they figure out some way to preserve it before it’s too late.