Going to China, we had planned three things,
1: We will spend most time in Beijing,
2: We will travel to one other place, not decided but most likely Tianjin
3: We will live at hostels to keep cost down and afford all the activities we want and ofc, awesome food
So far we have:
Spent most time in Beijing, the first week in a hostel, so far, so good.
Then we booked a trip to Shanghai for 5 nights, so far so good.
However, in Shanghai, we booked a 4.5 star hotel, because why not. It’s not that expensive to be honest. And we appriciate the upgrade of comfort, with a indoor pool and a gym.
Today we were supposed to go back to Beijing, but instead of booking a ticket to Beijing, we booked one to Hangzhou… Which I think will be really cool.
In Hangzhou the roof setting will be a downgrade, it’s only a 3 star facility. Stil, it’s a hotel and not a Hostel, it includes breakfast (coffee <3) and is located close to a park. We have no idea if it’s a good location or not, since we really have no idea about how Hangzhou is built. All we know is that Hangzhou is way smaller than Beijing and Shanghai, with only about 10m population… Damn Chinese village.
So, our 5 nights in Shanghai can be concluded into: Awesome place, awesome food
If you have followed the blog, you know we have enjoyed ourself, we have found great food and that we have seen some cool stuff. But you have only recieved the first 2 days, and lacking the following three. Overall, we are satisfied and we find Shanghai to be a cool place. It feels way more structured than Beijing. The traffic is more organized, so is passing the streets as a pedestrian. We found awesome Baozi, better than those we found in Beijing. We enjoyed awesome Taiwaneese noodles… it became our breakfast 3 days straight, and by breakfast I could just as likely call it lunch, simply because we ate it around noon.
Shanghai was supposed to be filled with rain, and at some parts, it was
When we were going to Shanghai, we saw that the weather raport was predicting rain every day. However the first days we had sunny skies and nice weather. Shanghai was also way cooler than Beijing, with only 30 degrees celsius. However, it is way more humidt than Beijing, which gave us a different feeling. I don’t want to talk about weather all day, so I will conclude it with the following: The weather in Shanghai was nice, but the last two days were filled with pouring rain… And when it rains in Shanghai, It’s pretty aggressive.
Going up 450m in a tiny building.
It’s a tiny little cottage that reach 101 floors above the ground, to get up to 97th floor it took 1 minute. 95th floor is 435 meters above the ground, so that’s pretty incredible. The elevator reached a top speed of 10m per second, and when it started to break it felt like we were levetating. The last part of the elevator ride might have been the scarriest experience so far on this trip, because knowing you are 435m above the ground, inside a metal cage, and get the sensation of you loosing all of the speed… well, it started to feel like you were falling. Even though you were still going upwards, wierd experience and hard to explain. But simply imagine you see that you are more than 400m above the ground and get the sensation of falling… Never before experienced adrenaline from going up an elevator, :D.
After that we could go by escalator to the 97th floor, where we could see how far up we had gone. It was a cloudy day, but we still could see the entire city of Shanghai. On the 97th floor we entered the next elevator, that were going to take us to the 100th floor… Which iirc was 475m above the ground, and ofcourse they had made the floor with glass… Even though my mind is constructed with a logical way of thinking, that part did not work while walking on the glass… Of course it won’t break when others are stepping on it, but it will break when I am there… Ye, logics are left on the ground level.
The experience of going up to 100th floor can be summarized with the following:
Great and thrilling experience, worth trying if you are ever in Shanghai. If you can, I think you want to do it when the sky is clear, because then you have the ability to take awesome photos. If you don’t care about photos, you don’t need to care about the weather.
Cruising the waters of Shanghai
After the thrilling trip up the tower we wanted to have a more chill experience, not knowing where we were going or what we were going to find we just started to walk. We knew we were heading towards the river, but had no further plan. Once we reached the water we found some boats (duuh), some of them being cruiseships that parked at the same location as we were standing. We saw a ticket vendor and bought tickets for the 7pm ride. I had before hand read that going on the river at night is an awesome experience, because it’s getting dark pretty fast and pretty much every building is hosting a lightshow. And indeed, it was awesome.
Going on the river was one of the best ideas we had while being in Shanghai. It was beautiful and really cool to see one side of the river being all those historical and european buildings. The other side was filled with huge sky scrapers formed into great architecture sculptures. The boat ride was 45min, which was just long enough to still find it cool.
Pouring rain ment indoors activities, timing was essential
I don’t know if we were just lucky or if the universe was on our side. But our timings were pretty great when it came to avoiding the worst parts of the rain. We were walking outdoors a lot during our time in Shanghai, but we not even once got the aggressive rain on our shoulders. It all happend as we were indoors. And I love the malls of China, they are huge, our favorite in Shanghai was 5 minute walk from the hotel, it had 7 floors above ground and 2 below. 4 of these floors were restaurants and coffeshops. Right outside the mall, we had a coco shop, which serves awesome drinks (including coffee <3). This is the place where we found our awesome taiwaneese noodles, cheap and tasty! The last day, we got stuck for a few hours beacuse of the rain, so we started to explore the basements, found the subway, and also 3 more malls connected to this one… I love China. They have just as much to explore below the ground as there are above, which is nice when the weather aint the most pleasant for sightseeing.
Enjoying the hotel pool and gym
The best part about the hotel was the huge and comfortable bed, the second most awesome part was the bathtub (great after a long day of walking). The third best part was the fitness facilities. Before the last day we had only used the pool, felt nice to do some swimming to activate the entire body after walking a lot. But now it was also time to enjoy the gym, of course I ended the workout with a session in the pool, something I should do more often.
Now it’s time to explore Hangzhou, the train is about to reach its destination
As stated before, we don’t have much of a clue what we should expect by being in Hangzhou. But Marco Polo stated that Hangzhou is “heaven on earth”, so in a bit we will know what heaven is like and what happens when the Chinese people expand it into a mega city. On Monday we are booked on a bullet train heading towards Beijing, and it’s time to do some shopping. So far we have only bought a neck pillow for me (yesterday), 2 bracelets (also for me) and one fridge magnet (for kim).
And I found 
logo on top of a building
Start the day with some kind of movement and you have prepared the day for success
Coach Bjork
https://coachbjork.com
Online personal trainer