11 days of mayhem - day 10

Tuesday the 14th of April, the second last day of Shotty and Cookie's visit.  I went off to work during the day, and the guys spent the day wandering around some local shops and taking the opportunity to do some almost-last-minute shopping.  Once I got home from work, we decided to go have a look at the 3rd tallest building in the world - the Shanghai World Financial Centre.

Located on Century Avenue (a pretty major street in Pudong), the SWFC building rises above all others in Shanghai...and looks like a giant bottle opener.  Seriously.  They even sell bottle openers inside the building that are shaped like the building.  Amazingly expensive or I would have bought one.  Still might if I go back again.  Anyway, we made our way there and were truly impressed by the size of the place (makes we wonder how mind-boggling the Burj Dubai is up close since it's almost twice the size of the SWFC).  We paid our fee (around $AUD20 or so) and went into a waiting area for the elevators.  Once inside, we were treated to soft white pulsing lights and some ambient almost video-game-ish music - very cool.  The ride up to the 94th floor or so was extremely smooth - it didn't even feel like we were moving other than the tell-tale ear-popping associated with the change in pressure.

We quickly moved from floor 94 up to the highest observation platform in the world on the 100th floor - 474 metres up from the ground.  We were treated to an excellent view of both sides of the city (very happy it was a clear night!) and took a bunch of pictures, although a good number of those suffered from window glare.  After spending a bit of time looking around we went back down to the 94th floor to have a look at some of the (overpriced) merchandise, but ultimately decided against buying anything and went back down to the ground.

At this point we decided that since we'd been to the highest observatory in the world, we should probably have a drink at the highest bar in the world - conveniently located in the same building.  The highest bar in the world is named 100 Century Avenue, and is actually part of the Park Hyatt hotel which is located in the SWFC.  We had to go through a different entrance to get there (via metal detectors) and up a different (much less funky) elevator.  Eventually a couple of stops later, we were on the 93rd floor and drinking beer in the highest bar in the world.  

We didn't stay there very long as there actually weren't very many people around.  The guys discovered the Japanese style toilets (the building was designed by a Japanese architect) so used them a couple of times before we left and made our way to Windows Scoreboard for a few more beers before calling it a night.