Such a nice day to visit Shanghai Expo 2010 today! Last week we struggled against a very hot and humid weather but this week the weather is cooler and even fresh sometimes! With a nice 26C temperature that was the day we were waiting to visit Shanghai Expo 2010.

We took a 10mn walk from home to grab the free expo bus at Wujiaochang. It is a new bus with air conditioner and TV, we were nearly alone with another couple and it’s a direct bus to the Shanghai Expo 2010 so that means no stops on the way! The feeling to have such a nice bus for you alone is just amazing!

The organization and the transportation for this event is just perfect, there are plenty of buses available at many places in Shanghai and dedicated to the Shanghai Expo 2010. Part of the story is that we took the bus at 1pm and that’s not the most common time frame for the normal visitor. They usually get up early to enter first at the Shanghai Expo 2010. That’s also why we were alone in the bus.

We were told on TV since one month that the average amount of visitors at the Shanghai Expo 2010 is around 300.000 per day with a pick to 500.000 per day on weekends. We have seen on TV people running when the doors of the Shanghai Expo opened to get the first places on the line. Some popular pavilions may have up to 5 hours waiting line so you better be the first one.

So we had a better strategy and the one that I recommend to visit the Shanghai Expo 2010.

The best way is to take your time in fact. We have been there for early noon around 1pm; we didn’t wait more than 5mn to pass the main gate; that was fantastic!

Now let’s talk about this famous Shanghai Expo 2010; let me tell you something, this is amazing! The first impression is you enter in a new, modern and colourful city. The place is so huge; it’s almost already a big city itself!

I was pretty amazed by the organization; you have staff people everywhere to answer your questions and give you information. Almost all of them are volunteers, usually students.

Everywhere you have toilets and fresh water to load up your bottle. Not to mention the restaurants and snacks, inside and outside the pavilions. If the weather is too hot you have the main way setup with small showering rain to refresh you. You can sit almost whenever and wherever you want, there are many sits in the Shanghai Expo, and even with so many people inside, things seem to run smoothly and just fine.

I would say the only black point is when you want to visit a popular pavilion; I would suggest you to forget this idea during the day and to focus on some smaller and not so famous pavilion. Then at night and nearly at the close you can come back around and visit those more popular pavilions.
The Shanghai Expo 2010 is divided in 5 zones from A to C in the Pudong, zones D and E in the Puxi side (west of Huangpu River). All the pavilions are located in the Pudong side, the corporate and enterprises are located on Puxi side.
The zone A represents Asia and Middle East countries, the zone B represents Australia and South East Asia, and the zone C the most popular and the most crowded at any time represents Europe, North and South America.

Transportation within the Expo Park is very nice, with many buses to bring you from a zone to another, its good to mention that the bus is free but at some rush hour times during the day, buses are crowded and I recommend using the small electric car on the elevated pedestrian walk, its cost only 10rmb, you have your own sit and you can enjoy the view and the wind in your hair!

Don’t forget when you enter the Shanghai Expo 2010 for the first time to buy your Expo passport, and have your passport stamped each time you visit a pavilion. You will then keep a forever souvenir of this amazing Expo.

Now let’s talk about the pavilions, there are so many that one day will not be enough to visit all of them. We focused first on the ones that didn’t have big line, we just waited an average of 20mn for Morocco, 30mn for Qatar, 10mn for North Korea, and many small pavilions didn’t even had a line and were very surprising and beautiful inside.

So my advice is to visit the zone A first, with Asia and Muslim pavilions, then move to the zone B to visit some small pavilions as well, and then move to the Zone C, some pavilion for South America don’t even have a long line after 4pm, we visited without queuing more than 15mn the following pavilions, Peru, Chile, Columbia, and we were very disappointed about Brazil pavilion, such a big disappointment I don’t even want to comment about that. We also have been to the African area where you can admire some beautiful pavilion like the Angola one.


Then we have moved to the Caribbean pavilions in less than one hour, they are all in the same building, that’s very interesting especially Jamaica pavilion where you will be able to taste their coffee, it was delicious! Then we have been to Canada pavilion, less than 30mn waiting in the line, around 5pm, it was really nice but I would expect more about Canada. We then moved to Europe zone and enjoy many East Europe pavilions like Croatia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia; they are all very interesting and it’s nice to discover their culture.


Then at night we moved to the hot pavilions! French and Italian, during the day you will need to wait at least 3 to 4 hours to visit these pavilions but at night it is smooth and we waited only 45mn for the French one and not even 15mn for Italy. The UK pavilion is just fantastic, we had the privilege to enter VIP there, you can sit on the grass and look at this amazing piece of architecture.


I was very disappointed by the French pavilion, really nothing special inside; yes they have 7 pieces of Art, paintings and sculpture, there is also a nice showroom and presentation of Louis Vuitton, you can also see the French Chef working in the kitchen, but I mean I was not impressed at all. Go take a look at the Italian pavilion, its 2 or 3 times bigger and wow! Impressive, really impressive, I would say one of my favourite!

There is some pavilion that will take your entire day of waiting in the line and I just recommend avoiding them unless you have a special VIP access or a real motivation to wait the whole day to visit, those pavilions are really the most popular, China of course, Japan and Saudi Arabia. It’s at least 5 hours of queuing!


Here it is! We had such a nice day at the Shanghai Expo 2010, we will visit again and we plan to see the Australian pavilion and many others that we missed the first time!