Lonely Planet FAIL.

 

 Finally, here are pictures from our trip to Suzhou! We're starting to talk about another trip next weekend, so I thought I better get these up before I fall further behind! It was one of those weekends, where in spite of best efforts to figure out what we wanted to see and do, nothing was meant to be, and yet it was still a great weekend. Our Chinese teacher was right, we did go too early, so the gardens were only beginning to bloom. And the "Venice of China" moniker is a real stretch of the imagination. Yes, there are stagnant canals everywhere (that painters just dump their leftover paint into), but no one uses them except the garbage boats (to pick out the trash the locals throw right in them) and the occasional tourist boat. Cars and scooters honk incessantly and careen in every direction, making me wonder if the person who dubbed it 'Venice' had in fact, ever been to Venice. And our guide book was awful...wrong addresses, incorrect hours for the museum, bad restaurant recommendations, and map scales completely out of whack. When we got back home, I google mapped everywhere we walked, and in a supposedly 2 square mile town, we walked 21.35 miles! Our hotel was a great surprise--far nicer than we'd realized! We'd gladly go back and just spend a week there (now that we know the addresses and hours of places we wanted visit!)! Our hotel was next to the only remaining section of the old wall that used to surround Suzhou, and our hotel was built to look just like it....  In the end we had a great long weekend just wandering and finding the hidden charm on our own. We took way too many photos (I am my father's daughter)--here's my attempt to narrow it down a bit.



Pan Gate, 1355...only remaining section of Suzhou's city walls.





Our hotel....



View from our room--Auspicious Light Pagoda



That's me up there!



View from the top

Cool escape from the heat





Crazy flowering tree



Beautiful florist shop

Garden of the Master of the Nets

I loved these doors and windows all over the garden....I spare you by only posting two...





Tourists on the left, garbagemen on the right...



Adorable grandpas shootin' the breeze....They actually seemed tickled that I took their picture



Looked like an abandoned building, but someone has made it home....

North Temple Pagoda (5th cent, rebuilt 17th cent) tallest pagoda south
of the Yangtze River.  Was originally someone's home!

This would be me too, if this was my job! We've jumped in one of these just once when we couldn't find a cab, and I just felt awful. It was 90 degrees but the guy was dressed for winter, and had to drag us uphill to the bus station. I understand that this is a normal job here, but I wanted to help push the whole time.

Just a small load....

Bri's favorite find of the weekend.



Canal by night...