tallest tower

i continue struggling to keep my blog up to date! yesterday, i wrote about the weekend. today, i will write about monday night and our trip to the top of the shanghai world financial center- one of the tallest skyscrapers in the world. the tower in dubai is overall taller, but the wfc gets the title of "highest observation deck in the world." we chose to go on monday night because monday was the clearest day that we have witnessed thus far in shanghai. it's hard to describe just how hazy and ... disgusting... it is on a daily basis here. usually when you go to the bund, your pictures just show your face and a cloudy-white background. no river or buildings to be seen. but monday was gorgeous :) here's the view from my room... you can see buildings that i had literally never seen before in my 5 weeks here.

on our orientation tour of shanghai back in june, the guide explained that the wfc was initially designed to look like a giant knife piercing the sky. obviously, that didn't appeal to some people, so they changed the design to resemble a bottle opener! a tall, solid rectangle with a trapezoid-shaped gap in the top. the 100th floor observation deck (four hundred and ninety two meters up in the sky) is the glass-floored top of the trapezoid.

soooo i was pretty excited for this journey to the top with sarah and john, but my spirits waned a little when we had to throw down 150 kuai for tickets (that's 22 USD, but here, it's enough to eat for a week. not cool). oh well, it's one of those life experiences, right? wrong! when we exited the elevator on the 94th floor, i was dizzy and disoriented, which has never happened to me before in relation to heights! after one more elevator ride to the 100th floor, we walked out onto the glass platform and could watch clouds blowing at some 30 miles per hour through the hole in the building beneath our feet. at this point, i was extremely uncomfortable...... just barely coherent enough to enjoy the view.

i wasn't too embarrassed because john was suffering exactly the same symptoms! so we snapped our pictures and headed down as fast as we could, hopped in a cab, and went home-sweet-home. i guess i am glad i went, since the wfc is a shanghai must-see, and i would've wondered about it forever if i didn't go! but i'll be staying away from skyscrapers for a while.