On Sunday, the fiance and I went to a Coffee Festival in Shanghai in the monstrous business district Lujiazui (loo - jya - zway). This makes sense; Shanghai is the city with the most coffee shops on the entire planet. Fun Fact, eh.

It really has shaped some of my habits. I'm not even a coffee drinker really. Coffee gives me horrendous shakes and any more than a small dosage and my entire day is ruined with weird anxiety shaky feelings. I hate it.

And yet, I drink coffee every day.

...

I don't depend on it, but I consider it my one 'treat' each day during my dieting days, as I go for weaker coffees such as lattes or the more sweet things like sea salt cheese or whatever. They're not healthy of course but after that one cup at 8 or 9am, the rest of my day is health food. I would always regret getting a second even if it's a week sugary one, so I never do.

But yeah, even though I'm not a coffee guy - I don't even like the inherent bitterness of coffee! - it has somehow become a daily part of my life, and an actual 'treat' to look forward to on the weekend. Delivery is either free or just barely above free, and no matter where we are, there's no shortage of different shops to order them from, all with different themes, styles, designs, quirks, flavours. Some just focus on actual good quality, although you'd probably be better to go Vietnam or Italy if you want to go elite.

Shanghai is the land of the sweet, so don't expect world-class beans or something.

Anyway, I actually wanted to focus on something else - The Architecture.

Liujiazui is home to what I consider the second tallest building in the world, The Shanghai Tower. Some say third or fourth but these cheating buildings have huge communication poles or whatever which just doesn't count.

Shanghai Tower is 632m, which is still a far cry from the Burj Khalifa's 829, but still, impressive.

It's hard to really appreciate it even when close up, because it's just always further away than you think. But for perspective, it took us about 45-50 minutes by subway to get there from home - and yet I can see the building from my living room.

_{Don't Doxx Me}

Another way to appreciate its height is by comparing with surrounding buildings. When you're inside, looking out from one of the top floor bars or observation area, buildings look pathetically tiny, and yet they're actually monstrous, 45-story buildings that block out the sky when you're standing on the ground.

Some of the other buildings are pretty interesting too. Right Next to it you have this kind of caged looking thing called the Jin Mao tower. With 88 floors, it's no midget itself. The Architecture of this building was designed by the same group who designed the Burj Khalifa, so there's some prestige here.

And to finish off the towering trio, there's the original tallest building of Shanghai, The Financial Center, or the bottle opener, for obvious reasons.

This itself is also a gigantic 101 floors, a little under 500m tall.

Back to the coffee

So yeah, with these three beasts towering over the entire coffee festival, it's hard to not constantly look up, but you're in a park which is centrally located, surrounded by an infinite number of other, lesser but still huge buildings.

Combine that with thousands of people, and you have quite the nightmare for anybody with a tinge of claustrophobia.

The queue to get in was hundreds of people long, but moved at a rate you could enter quickly, so it was a giant conveyor belt of people entering, checking out some coffee, and leaving.

It wasn't as bad as I make it sound, but my fiance did force me to queue for about 45 minutes for a single, new-technology coffee of some sort. It tasted ok. Not 45-minutes good, but it was nice.

Not every brand and shop is within delivery range of our home, so it was quite interesting to see what else Shanghai had to offer from all corners.

There was even a Pepe the Frog coffee brand?? Not sure if that's legal or what?

You got Pepe Immersion Drippers and all sorts!

My personal favourite brand was simply, Fat Face:

However, like I said, more than 1 coffee kills me, so I basically came to just walk around and queue up. But hey, thought i'd share anyway. I'm sure they all taste great.