Sightseeing in Shanghai

The weekends after we have written an exam usually consist of sleeping, sightseeing and having fun. Since we have not had a whole lot of time of getting to know Shanghai, yet, we use those weekends to see if the “Lonely Planet” is right about all the sights in this city. One of the things that you have got to see when you come to Shanghai is the so-called People’s Square. It is a place where it is always crowded and in the nearby People’s Park you can take some time to take a break and sit down. The area is surrounded by skyscrapers and we were pretty impressed by the architecture. Doesn’t the building in the second picture look like it would fit into “The Lord of the Rings”? ;)





From this place we started walking into Nanjing Road – the main street and known for its great opportunities to go shopping. I don’t think that I have ever seen that many people in one day. And whenever there are crowds of people, locals will try to sell you something. “Have a look! DVDs, watches…” or “Rolex, Rolex” are one of the sentences that will start annoying you once you have walked into the street. But our hard work for the Chinese language course paid off and we were able to tell them that we did not want to buy anything. I took a few pictures, but then we decided to head to the even taller buildings of the city and watch the sunset from up there. A few picture of the area that I have just talked about. In my opinion, the second one is very typical of Shanghai. You can see the contrast between an old building which seems to have been there forever and a very new building in the background.







We walked to the “World Finance Center” which is the world’s 3rd tallest building! It looks like a huge bottle opener and the view from the top is amazing. We were a little late for the sunset, but it was still a great view. Of course, I took a few pictures in order to make you jealous :) In the first one you can see the bottle opener right next to the former city’s tallest building. In the second picture you can see us at the very top of the building and in the third one you can see the amazing view which you have from up there.







Last weekend, we treated ourselves with a ride on the “Maglev” train which is also known as the Transrapid. It was quite an adventure and I must say that it felt a little scary to basically fly over the city. 431 km/h is just incredibly fast! You can see the train in the next picture:





There are still many sights to see and luckily there is also some time left to have a look at the rest of the city. However, I think on the next free weekend we will plan a trip to a place outside of the city. The countryside is waiting to be explored…

IN: German engineering (Transrapid)
OUT: all the annoying people who never seem to stop bugging you because they want to sell their souvenirs and other junk