Shanghai Travel Answers

The best way to discover the city is walking! Shanghai has an excellent subway system which will get you wherever you want to go, then just walk and enjoy the city. With mimimum traveling experience and a good travel/guidebook, I don't believe a guide is needed or advised. Giuseppe

Do you realize that the World Expo will be in Shanghai in April? You will hardly be alone visiting. It is a fantastic (BIG!) city with loads of things to see and do. Pick up a good tour book and plan your days. I liked the Eyewitness Beijing/Shanghai. It listed a couple of good full day walks and was very helpful in understanding the cultural aspects of shopping and surviving in a city where English is not so widely spoken. We had Shanghai work colleagues with us which was incredibly helpful for shopping. When you buy things on the street you must bargain and you will typically want to pay 10 to 20% of the original asking price! Have fun!

Someone prefer to go alone, some with a personal guide. Stay away from tour groups! What do you have in mind for evenings? Of course there's stuff to do in the evenings (goodness, this is one of China's biggest cities!) but what do you like?

I think Shanghai is very easy to discover alone, you really dont need a guide. Just do your research (this is the best place for that!!) and work out the exact things you want to visit and then try and cram as many into your few days as possible. Personally, I think that even a week in Shanghai is not enough!!! If I only had a few days I would attempt to do the following:- 1. 3 Main tall towers of Pudong - Oriental Pearl Tower, SWFC and JM Tower 2. Yu Yuan Gardens 3. Shopping at Xinyang Markets All of these places are on my Shanghai pages (tips) with detailed info on how to get there, prices, pics etc. Have fun :)

No need to go up all 3 of those skyscrapers/towers. Out of the 3 I'd pick the 100th level of SWFC.

If you have time, then why not do all 3. From my experience, they are all different, cant say which was best, although Id lean towards the Oriental Pearl Tower, only because it has a better glass bottom floor than the 100th floor of the SWFC. As for the Cloud 9 Bar (Im told the highest bar in the world!) who would not want to say they had had a drink there!

I had a drink at the Cloud 9 bar in October. The views were amazing. The drinks were expensive. It was fun though.

Yes Katherine, drinks are not cheap! We had 2 drinks each and a cheese platter and it was by far our biggest restaurant bill in China for the whole 3 weeks!!! But, we went there and were up in the clouds as it was overcast and couldnt see a thing! But ... it was still good :)

That's terrible! We had a clear day. One other thing about Cloud 9 was there were no locals there, other than the work colleagues we brought. Everyone was western. While I'm glad we went it was the least authentic of our experiences in Shanghai. Most interesting was the street market.

Why "least authentic"? It's what China is aiming to develop into, I wouldn't say it's fake. Going up all 3 would be pretty expensive! Perhaps not for you but not everyone can splurge. :(

You're right of course. But what I meant by authentic was there were only tourists there. I took several of my work colleagues who work in Shanghai and they had never been there, nor never thought to go there. Price-wise, it was way out of their budget.

True, you're paying more or less for the view rather than for the drinks itself. However I see lots of Chinese tourists at the Oriental Pearl TV Tower which costs even more than Cloud 9! I think it's just a case of them knowing about one but not the other.

BTW, the World Expo starts in May and runs till October. It's not open yet in April.

A few day's will not be enough for this magical city. Do your research, make a list of things you would like to see and do. As getting around is a fantastic adventure on it's own!