Suzhou: the Venice of China

We left early Sunday morning to catch the train the Suzhou, the Venice of China. We all checked into our hotel and then met in the lobby. But lo behold we discovered that no one had made an itinerary from this trip or knew what to do or where to go. Haha whoops! Luckily I went back to the front desk for some reason and found a note that the marrieds has left for us the night before. We found their room and joined in on their plans for the day. We planned on going to a canal street to go on a gondola ride and then hitting up another stop where they had found a massive Ferris Wheel. Sadly, it was POURING rain... so to by some time we went out to eat at Papa Johns and then wandered around in an arcade place.

This is a picture of the "big" prizes for the arcades... oh China.... rice cookers, microwaves, mops, steamer, crock pot, fan, pots, etc.

One of the metro stops (where the Ferris Wheel was at) was called Times Square and just down from that one was Central Park.... is this the Venice of China or the New York of China??

The rain had stopped just long enough for us to wander around the canal street, which was gorgeous! It looked like what I had envisioned all of China to look like.

Jambo anyone? So close China, so close.

Our "gondola ride" which was actually super fun.

The world would be a better place if everyone was as happy doing their job as this lady scooping garbage.

This is probably one of my most favorite China pictures. This is our boat chauffeur who kept us very entertained between his picture poses, letting us drive, and his almost-on-key serenades.  At one point he sang just to me and it was definitely a memory-maker.

The Ferris Wheel. So Awesome. We walked to the Ferris Wheel which was in the middle of this big amusement park. Unfortunately we walked to the gate and it was already closed for the night, the sign said 9:30 am-17:30 pm and it was 5:45pm when we had gotten there. BUMMER! So we chilled on the dock overlooking the big lake and the island for about 45 minutes before leaving. As we were sitting there, though,  we noticed the lights in the amusement park were turning on so we tried the gate one last time. Some Chinese girls were standing there too so we asked what was going on and they said they didn't know either so they hollered at a guard sitting inside and he laughed and said that we needed to go to the front gate to enter.... "She was looking kinda dumb with her finger and her thumb in the shape of an 'L' on her forehead!" We just looked at each other and laughed. We turned the corner and found this MASSIVE entrance gate which would have been VERY hard to miss had we just kept walking straight before. Once inside we used our student cards and only had to pay 20 yuan for the ticket, which is like 4 dollars. What? The park was pretty cool, especially at night and several of the rides, including the Ferris Wheel, were free. The roller coaster which we actually really wanted to go on was 40 yuan ($8) extra, which was a bummer, but oh well. The Ferris Wheel took 30 minutes to complete the circle because it was so massive so we bought some popcorn before and just enjoyed the ride. :D

That night we went back to our hotel. Amber, Ellen, Alyssa and I always share a room because it's much cheaper and we like being together! Usually, though, we get a room with two twin beds and push them together. This room only had one queen bed, and a smaller-than-usual queen bed I might add. Well needless to say that night was a bit squishy. This is a silly picture but it shows well just how close we slept that night. Oh memories :D

The next morning we headed back to the Times Square stop to watch the Dragon Boat Festival! The story behind this festival is that a guy that wrote poems about how he didn't like the government threw himself in the river when the government got really bad and the people who adored him threw in rice dumplings to keep the fish from eating his body and beat drums on boats to scare the fish away. So now they beat drums on boats while racing them on the lake and sell those rice dumplings on the day of the Dragon Boat Festival every year. Oh, and also while we were at the festival we bumped into a group of white guys from BYU! It was fun to converse with them and hear there experiences. They're in China for about 3 weeks interning for mechanical engineering. Then every place we went to after that we kept bumping into them again, it was funny.

We only had a little bit of time left before our train left but we were determined to see the leaning pagoda of China so we dashed to the Tiger Hill Scenic Area, took awesome pictures, then headed back out. It was a bummer we had to leave so quickly though because this place was Gorgeous! Oh, and we bumped into the BYU boys here again.

This picture is just a small glimpse of how pretty the Tiger Hill Scenic Area was.

The train ride back to Nanjing! Luckily we were all seated right next to each other, which doesn't happen that often. I have definitely spoiled myself... the K trains are way cheaper but the fast trains like this one are just so much more clean and way faster.

Ok these next to pictures are just silly. We were walking on the street one night and these Asians were trying to sell their puppies and they were probably the cutes dogs I have every seen. I'm not much of a dog person but if I ever did get a dog then it would be this kind. We all fell in love so quickly. Oh, and I would name it Xinjiekou (Shin-Jay-Koe) after the transfer subway stop.