Goodbye Shanghai

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City Shanghai, China
Language Mandarin
Currency Chinese Yuan
Climate high 36c - low 26c - sunny
This was our last day at the apartment before heading to the airport hotel so decided to spend the morning checking out the view from the 88th floor of the Jinmao tower. We walked back via the musical instrument district to the Bund and went underneath the river through the Bund sightseeing tunnel at a very pricey fee of 45Y - a lot more than the 3Y for the metro! The experience made us smile as it was like a light show from the 70’s as we travelled through the tunnel. Out the other side and we walked to the Jinmao tunnel and caught the lift up to the 88th floor. Quite a weird feeling as you don’t feel the elevator moving, but you’re watching the floors and the height counter flickering through the floors until we arrive at 330 metres in about 9 seconds. What a view from here! We were fortunate that the smog had burned off and allowed us a great 360’ view of Shanghai, including looking out over the EXPO site. It gave a fantastic perspective of how large the Chinese pavilion was, dwarfing the next largest pavilion by about 4 times.
We headed back to the apartment and grabbed the bags - destination airport. Our mode of transport was to be the Metro, line 2 taking us all the way there. Took us about an hour to get there from People’s Square. Our accommodation booked for the night was to be at the Dazhong Airport Hotel - the Motel 168 section at 6001 YingBin Avenue, PuDong Airport, Shanghai. www.dazhongairporthotel.com The airport hotel is right in between Terminal’s 1 and 2 (right above the Maglev and Metro stations) so can’t beat the location. It was going to save us getting up at 5am! After settling into the shoebox-sized room, we got on-line (free) and skyped friends in NZ and Abu Dhabi. Great to hear familiar voices - speaking English! After a quick shower we headed across the space-like ramp to their bar - elevated between the hotel and motel wings of the hotel. We were the only patrons and we enjoyed our Chinese glasses of wine. After that we took the lift down a few floors to have a buffet dinner. Fairly average food and service, but OK for an airport. Back to room and to bed to rest up before a full day of travel tomorrow.

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