Day 6 - Shanghai

Colette and I headed off to Pudong this morning to get the requisite photos of Shanghai from one of the tall towers in the city. There are two completing towers in Pudong built right next to each other: Jinmao (88 stories and 420 m tall) and World Financial Centre (101 stories and 492 m tall and known fondly by the expats here as the Bottle Opener). We decided to head up the Jinmao Tower. The view as quite good despite the ever present haze. The Oriental Pearl (to the right of the photo below) is a TV station I believe and has become a distint icon of the the Shanghai cityscape. On our way to visit the other side of the river, known as the Bund, I stopped to buy some street food (see photo below). Six small crabapples were skewered on a stick and the whole lot is covered by a sweet hard candy. It makes for an interesting contrast between sweet and sour. Colette and I wandered along the Bund with the crowds taking in the river and the old buildings and managed to shove our way to the railing so we could get a shot of us and the Oriental Pearl behind us. We managed to keep our spot for maybe 3 seconds before an old lady shoved us back into the drifting crowds. After a bit more wandering around the Bund area, it was time to take a break, so we popped into the Westen for a cocktail before we headed off to the Shanghai Literary Festival. Colette had booked tickets for us to attend a talk by an English author who writes about Shanghai and also a Chinese black and white silent film which had been subtitled. Both were quite good. The silent film was hilarious! Over dramatic and so much makeup!
After the film, I snapped a couple of shots of Pudong lit up for night from the Bund. Fo dinner, we popped into an Irish expat pub with some friends of Colette's for some steak and Guiness pie and fries. Yum.