On my first day in Shanghai I did a little visit over to Pudong, the CBD area of the city. The view from the west side of the Bund river looking toward CBD is the postcard image of Shanghai that I'm used to seeing come up on Google searches.
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| Pudong from across the Bund river |
I took a cab underneath the river to the CBD area and quickly located the Jin Mao Tower, which sports one of the highest bars in the city. The bar is called Cloud 9 and is part of the Grand Hyatt which takes up about 15 floors near the top of the tower. I spent about 45 minutes here enjoying a beer and some salmon cones before deciding to move on. Compared to
Cloud 9 in Mumbai, this bar was fairly high class.
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| Jin Mao Tower from below |
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| View from Cloud 9 |
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| Salmon cones |
After Cloud 9 I ventured out to the street and made my way over to the Shanghai World Financial Center. Looking up from the road in between the three skyscrapers located here gave me a bit of vertigo.
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| Shanghai World Financial Center |
The Financial Center building appears to have a handle on the top that would allow you to pick up the building quite easily were you a giant. This handle is the viewing platform on the 100th floor, which is complete with glass floors allowing you to look down to the rest of the building and the city below. From the top I was able to look down from above the clouds onto the building I'd been eating salmon cones in 45 minutes before. The thing this place was missing was a classy bar to go along with the view, although they do a bar a couple stories below its really just a dinky little stand with a couple seats near a window. Other then that miner downside, the Financial Center was a quick and satisfactory tourist attraction.
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| View from the viewing platform |
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| Jin Mao Tower from above |
