The View

In Shanghai Dave and I stayed at The Ritz Carlton - Pudong. The thing is, you come to expect a level of service at Ritz Carlton hotels and in Asia, service is even better. Our expectations were high.

I arrived several hours before Dave and had time to explore. This property did not disappoint. Our room was on the 41st floor with an unobstructed view of the Huangpu River, which divides the city, and The Bund, which runs along the river and is the home of many historic buildings, ones that formerly housed US, British, Japanese, Belgian, Russian, Italian and German trading houses and banks.

Similar to Emporium in Bangkok, a shopping mall occupied the first eight levels of the building, offices were above that, and the hotel took the upper floors. Reception was on the 52nd floor. The infinity pool was on the 53rd floor. We had drinks at Aura one night, with its outdoor patio, the highest in Shanghai. The mall, called the IFC or International Financial Center Mall, seemed high-end to me. Miu Miu, Prada and Versace were our neighbors. But across the street was the Super Brand Mall, with the even more high-end stores! While both malls have IMAX theatres, only the Super Brand Mall had an ice skating rink, too. I liked ours better, though, as it was served by the Metro.


The picture here was taken from our floor-to-ceiling window. You can see across the river to The Bund.

The hotel is Art Deco style, my favorite. I emailed my mom: Send children. We are moving in. It has a stand-alone footed bathtub and lots of brown marble. The drapes automatically closed when we left the room and reopened when we returned. From bed we could control the HVAC, lighting and, of course, drapes. The flowers pictured here were in our elevator lobby.

In the end we did check out. In fact, I'm writing this post from Seoul's Incheon Airport en route home. It does get a little tiring greeting all those doormen.