Shanghai - A City of Towers

So I promised in a previous post that I would post on our visit to Shanghai when I got a chance to put the pics on flickr, so while some are on there way up, here is my summary.

Shanghai is certainly a city of biggest and fastest. The most interesting thing about the city is the new right on top of the old, you literally have old traditional neiborhoods that are well over 100 years old being torn down to make way to a skyscraper or high rise condos in the same space. You can walk through these old poor areas, and cross the street and strain your neck at a skyscraper. We asked there was so much building going on in the old areas (basically shacks building additional floors one on top of another) and the reason is that when the government designates a block for regeneration then they pay out the current land owner based on SQ Footage. So folks have people on the inside that know this is going to happen, give the owners the heads up, and the building begins, all just to be torn down again.

So some of the biggest. Shanghai is home to two of the worlds tallest skyscrapers, and they are both new. D and I made the trip to the sky deck of the Shanghai World Financial Center, which is no longer the worlds tallest building (Tai Pai 101 has beat it by adding a spire), but it is the worlds highest observation deck and the grand opening for the building was the day before our visit :-)... you are literally above all the other skyscrapers and above the clouds... plus the floor is glass (see the pic, we were walking across that top bridge above the hole in the building.

We also did a roundtrip journey on the Maglev Train, the fastest comercial train in the world, traveling at 341km per hour... I was very excited about this. Just to think we were literally floating on magnets.

Our visit included a walk through the French Concession, a walk along on the Bond (AKA British Concession) and your typical exploring.

I loved the pace of development, it was truly astounding. One other thing, when we drove to the Train Station (45mins in a bus) I kid you not, I must have seen 10 thousand 25+ floor apartment buildings as far as the eye can see in every direction.

Now I have to run, we are back in Beijing, about to catch our flight to Osaka, Japan.

- Ryan