We spent in Shanghai two days and managed to visit the most popular attractions in Shanghai. We went to Bund and enjoy the walk arounf the business district. Also we had couple of surprises as always in China. In China it’s a surpsire when nothing surprising happens during one day :) Check our coverage and see what happened during our trip!
How We Got To Shanghai
We took a night train from Zhengzhou to Shanghai. We got in and almost immediately went to sleep. Our places were the middle ones. The train had one common compartment just like the ones we booked for example in Russia that is called platzkart. With one exception because the beds were placed differently as you can see on the pic:
We got the places in the middle, which means we were sleeping in between and during the night everything was fine and we could get enough sleep. The funny thing happened after I (Agata) woke up :) I opened my eyes and spotted that the guy that was sleeping above me is literally staring at me and Paweł :) He was looking out his bed and he had this huge glasses that are so popular in China. The guy was staring and didn’t even stop when I woke up :) I poked and woke up Paweł that was sleeping opposite me and the Chinese guy still kept looking at us :) He kept watching us even when we started laughing because the situation got a little awkward to be so scrutinized.
Probably he got to the train in some small city and he got off very quickly also in a small city. So maybe he wasn’t used to seeing white faces. The situation was funny because he was looking at us and observing what we do like we were monkeys in the zoo. This sometimes happens in China because you can meet people that didn’t have contact with other races before. They can get very interested in you sometimes :)
GETTING OF THE TRAIN ISN’T EASY
Another weird thing happened at that train later. We were supposed to get to Shanghai at 12:35 p.m. Fortunately for us it was the last station. Why fortunately? Because we didn’t speak any Chinese. The train got completely empty at one of the stations at about 10:30 a.m. And some lady was telling us something in Chinese in a very expressive way. We had no idea what she wanted but she kept talking and showing us something :) There was also one young girl leaving the train that took pity on us and showed us with her finger and told: this station – Shanghai.
It really sounds unbelievable but she was right, it was our station. We got to our destination 2 hours ahead schedule. And till now we can’t believe how it happened. We took many trains in our lives and if the train isn’t on time, it means it should be later but never earlier. But this is China so, if you’re going there keep in mind that you will be surprised with something every day. Hopefully this was the last station because otherwise nobody would inform us that we should leave and in two hours we could get very far with this fast trains :)
Our Accomodation
We booked a room in a private apartment on Airbnb because Shanghai isn’t a cheap place. And we booked our place at the outskirts of the city so it took us some time to get to the apartment. And of course we couldn’t find it so we were looking for it pretty long and then when we found it, our host wasn’t opening his door so we thought that maybe it’s not a right place and kept looking and showing people the address again and they kept showing us the same place. After couple of trails he finally opened the door like nothing happened and said he was home all the time.
Ok, we didn’t even try to understand this situation and just wanted to freshen up and take a shower after a whole night in the train.
Attractions In Shanghai
Maybe we didn’t see much because we spent in Shanghai two nights and not whole three days but the one day (the whole one) was downpouring like crazy. At that day we had our first anniversary and wanted to go on Shanghai Tower but there was no point. It’s because the clouds wouldn’t allow us to see anything. We thought we might wait in the nearby shopping mall but there was nothing to do and the weather wasn’t getting any better. It was a day we really didn’t get to see anything.
So we just came back to our district and found amazingly delicious food. And very cheap at the same time and here you can see the photos:
ATTRACTIONS IN SHANGHAI – SHANGHAI TOWER
So we came back to see the Shanghai Tower and go up. We had to wait in line for a while to get the tickets but we weren’t waiting that long and fortunately the weather was beautiful that day. When we entered the elevator we felt like in Dubai. We were in Dubai couple of years ago and obviously had to go up on Burj Khalifa. And people that were designing the interior of The Shanghai Tower, even the elevator and the observatory area were in Burj Khalifa too. Almost everything looked exactly the same :)
But fortunately, the views from the Tower weren’t the same. It was beautiful – we could see all these huge buildings in the area and they seemed small from our perspective. We could see the whole city and people were small like ants. We also spotted that they took a ferry to get on the other side of the Huangpu Jiang river. It was a good idea. We thought we will do that later as well and tried to remember the route to get to the haven :)
And never forget to be a civilized person :)
ATTRACTIONS IN SHANGHAI – PUDONG NEW AREA
Pudong New Area refers to a district in Shanghai in which all the highest buildings are located. There is Jin Mao Tower, Shanghai Tower, Oriental Pearl Tower and Shanghai World Financial Centre. The buildings are very high and they are all very modern and unique. We took a walk around this area and we can say that it’s hard to take photos of them from such close distance.
Later we went in the direction of the haven we saw from the top of Shanghai Tower. The distance was not big and we could easily get there. We also didn’t have to wait long for the ferry to set off and the cruise was very cheap. We don’t remember exactly how much it was but it was more of a symbolic price so definitely worth to take. The cruise also didn’t last long because it was only taking us to the other bank of the river but the views were beautiful and we took many photos there.
ATTRACTIONS IN SHANGHAI – BUND
Bund is probably one of the most popular of all attractions in Shanghai. Every traveller takes loads of pics there. It’s a promenade along the river that faces all of the skyscrapers we mentioned above (Shanghai Tower, Oriental Pearl Tower and other buildings) so the view is fantastic and it’s easy to capture all the buildings in one pic.
Attractions In Shanghai – Final Thoughts
So we lost one whole day of sightseeing because the rain was so heavy that it was impossible to do anything. In this note we described the most popular attractions in Shanghai that every traveller should see during his visit. Of course in Shanghai there are many other interesting things to see. We will write about them in our next note about Shanghai.
Oh, almost forgot! Very interesting thing: Shanghai is a huge city and the Pudong district and Bund is visited by many tourists every day, but apart from it there are also many locals working there for example. In general, we saw on our cost the problem of overpopulation in China. Some years ago there was a policy of having only one child but now this rule doesn’t exist anymore.
During our stay in China we saw many pregnant ladies and so many kids. It may also come from the fact that there are many adult people so maybe it’s natural to spot more kids as well. But in Shanghai it was just crazy when it comes to the number of people we saw on the streets. This was probably the most crowded city of all we’ve ever visited. Here you are the photo of the street during the normal day in the early evening:
TAKING THE METRO
It was also crazy taking the metro from there because the metro came every 1 or 2 minutes and it was so crowded that only small amount of people could go in and the rest had to wait in line for the next metro to come. This way we were waiting and went to the third of fourth metro that came to the station. And it was still horribly crowded it was impossible to move when inside not even mentioning to sit down. We can’t imagine to commute like this every day to work or school. The problem of overpopulation can be felt every day when going out in this place. But apart from it we loved all attractions in Shanghai that we saw and if you haven’t been to Shanghai before, we hope we encouraged you to go there too! :)