Day 26: Shanghai, Thursday 16th October 2025
A famous skyline
24°, mirky/cloudy/light rain
NZ$1 = Y4
Y1=NZ$0.25
Up at 9am, out to breakfast at Starbucks at 9:45am. While we were there e booked tickets to the Shanghai Tower through Trip.com for later this morning ( Y$126 for 2 for 118th floor + damper show ). Walked to metro station “Yuyuan Garden”, for Line 14 ( fancy part of the station for this line ). We hadn’t used this line before and it is in a different ( more fancy ) part of the station then we had been using.
Metro to Lujiazui Station arr 10:35am, walked for 10 minutes to the base of the Shanghai Tower ( we could see most of the tower even though it was drizzling a bit ), and into basement to entry and found the entrance to the observation floors.
Shanghai Tower is a 128 floors / 632 office tower and is currently the tallest in China. It has the latest lifts in the world, and has a Mass Damper at the top of the building which is designed to counteract the movement in the building caused by an earthquake.
We were told that there was no view due to cloud ( there was a live camera shot behind the counter which was almost solid grey ), but we went up anyway ( we had already paid, and we have had situations before where the weather changes rapidly around these tall buildings ). Took the fast lifts to 118th floor and out to observation floor at 10:50am, walked around the floor but there was no view to be seen, then up to the 119th floor ( another observation floor ), then we headed into the Mass Damper ( an audio visual display centred around the Mass Damper ). This involved another lift up to the 126th floor at 11:15am. Went in and watched the laser show with music ( which was ok, but not overly exciting; we had bought tickets to the show as it was the only way to access this floor and see the Mass Damper ).
Back down to the 119th floor at 11:40am to find that the rain and cloud had cleared. Walked around looking down and taking photos, looking at the gift shops etc. Very impressive view, and a good way to get a feel for the layout of Shanghai. Back down to the basement at 12pm.
We found a food court in the basement of the Shanghai Tower and had beef curry/rice dish and 2 cans of drink for Y38. A very popular/busy foodcourt. While we were eating the table next to use came free and 2 business women walked over to grab the table… and they just casually dropped their building access cards and id’s on the table to hold it and wandered off to get food. Not many other places in the world would be safe enough to do that.
Left at 12:30pm and walked across above ground to the IFC mall for a look ( a lot of Cartier, Bugatti etc etc.) then through to Mega Brands Mall ( which was pretty empty ) then walked back to IFC to get a metro at Lujiazui Station then to East Nanjing Station.
We walked west along Nanjing Rd, through the hordes of tourists. It had started to drizzle again. This area of Shanghai really doesn’t appeal to us; very much designed for tourists ( with little ‘trains’ running through the street and people trying to sell things etc ) and has nothing that we like about China.
Walked through from the end of Nanjing Rd into The Peoples Park, which is a very nice, but very quiet, area with lots of trees etc, but we got lost and then couldn’t get out of the park. For some reason all the entrances on the far side of the park to where we came in were blocked or shut. We eventually found a way out at 2:30pm and decided to walk back to our hotel ( not raining now ).
Headed out onto Xizang Middle Rd then south, then walked south and east through the back streets of the Bund, passed a mosque, passed lots of new construction, passed Yuyuan Gardens station, then back to the hotel at 3pm.
Rested
Out at 6pm, waked in Yu Gardens Shopping area, went to the foodcourt ( actually a 3 storey building with just food outlets in it ) and other a selection of dishes from various stalls; potato cakes, dumplings and beef yellow curry vermicelli and 2 beers for Y98.
Walked to the Food Street on west side of Yu Gardens, bought 2 large pieces of cake ( Y90! for 2 ) then back to hotel to rest. This was our last full day in Shanghai as we would heading home tomorrow.
Zoomable Map ( pin is located on our hotel location )