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Suzhou

The second stop on our tour of China was Suzhou, the silk capital of China since the Song Dynasty (960-1279 A.D.). As well as silk production, Suzhou is also famous for its stone bridges, pagodas, and beautiful formal gardens. The first stop we made in Suzhou was at the Humble Administrator’s Garden, the largest formal garden in Suzhou.

On the second day of our stay in Suzhou, we started off with a rickshaw ride around the city. It was fairly nerve recking at some points, darting through the traffic in a rickshaw. Especailly when you are narrowly missing cars and bikes coming at you when darting accross the traffic.

After the rickshaw ride we went to a silk factory. They had a small museum with some exhibits explaining the process, including some working silk spinning machines.

The exhibits were quite interesting, but then we were marched in to the huge shopping mall at the end of the tour, containing every silk product imaginable. While the rest of the tour group went shopping Andy and I just went and had a coffee.

After lunch we headed for Tiger Hill, famous for it’s leaning pagoda (which predates and is taller than the leaning tower of Pisa).

To end the day we stopped by at an art school where people were learning to make silk ‘paintings’. It was a pleasant end to our stay in Suzhou. The next day we headed back to Shanghai to catch the plane to Beijing.

China

Andy and I just got back from an absolutely wonderful holiday in China. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to post any entries on here during the holiday as I had no internet access. Anyway, I was too busy enjoying myself, so you will just have to make do with a summary of my trip here :)

As usual, I took loads of photos, which can be found here:-

Shanghai
Suzhou
Beijing
Xi’an
Guilin
Hong Kong

Because we packed so much in this holiday I will probably split this over a few posts. Starting with…

Shanghai

Shanghai was the first stop on the tour. We arrived on the first day, and the guide ferried us to our hotel in the centre of Shanghai. Shanghai was quite a strange mix of old and new. On the one hand you had all these massive blocks of apartments springing up all over the place, but on the other you had little clusters of traditional houses that had probably been there for a couple of hundred years dotted in-between all these apartment blocks. It all seemed quite chaotic. Our hotel was quite (s)wanky. The rooms were quite fancy, and the bathroom had a rather nice walk-in shower. Our room even had a cute little fish bowl with some tiny fish in.

On the second day we got to meet our national guide, Ann. She was lovely. She couldn’t do enough for us on the whole trip. She was even grabbing our luggage for us off of the carousel at the airports (and she was not a big lady).

We started to do some sight-seeing on the second day. First we headed off to the Shanghai museum, where we saw various things from ancient Jade carvings like the one pictured below, to the costumes worn by the various minority ethnic groups within China (Of which there are around 55. There are 56 nationalities in China, including the majority Han nationality, which makes up around 90% of the population).

While we were at the museum we made a quick trip accross the road to the city planning office, where they had a massive model of the city on display.

After the museum we headed for the bund to go for a walk along the waterfront. It was quite packed. Unfortunately we couldn’t see much because it was really misty. As you can see in the photos below.

After lunch we headed to the Yu Yuan Gardens and Bazaar. It was quite pretty in the gardens. Although rather packed with tourists.

In the evening we headed back to the Bund for a night-time cruise down the river.

On the third day we went to the Jade Buddha Temple in the morning. It was quite interesting, though again absolutely packed with tourists. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take any pictures of the Jade Buddha itself, though I got a few nice shots of the inside of the temple.

From here we went to catch the train to Suzhou to start the second part of our tour.

Being a tourist for a day

Andy was away this weekend visiting his parents, so to kill the time yesterday I decided to do some sightseeing.

I started the day by heading down the mall from Admiralty Arch towards Buckingham Palace, arriving in time to see the changing of the guard.

Once that was over I headed off down the road for a wander around Belgravia.

Then I hopped on the tube to south Kensington to have a look at the Royal Albert Hall and the Albert Memorial.

From here I took a quick walk accross Hyde Park to Kensington Palace.

And then to notting hill for lunch…

And unsurprisingly after all that walking I was feeling just slightly worn out :-s

Lunar Eclipse

I took the picture below from my front porch last night :)

Greenwich and the docklands

We decided to go for a wander around the docklands on Saturday. I’ve decided I need to get some practice in with my new camera before we go to China. We started off at the thames barrier, and I took these:-

I think I might have to pay another visit when the weather’s a bit better. It was a bit overcast yesterday.

After the thames barrier we headed for Canary Wharf for lunch. There wasn’t a great deal to take a picture of around there. Just a load of boring glass buildings. There was this big wireframe snowman though:-

After lunch we headed for Greenwich for a walk around the park and the old naval college:-

We decided to leave climbing the hill up to the observatory to another day.