Venice of the East

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Woke up late, packed up and checked out at the last possible moment before the train to Suzhou.

We took the subway to the Shanghai Rail Station, and made our way to the ticket office. We stood in line, and some guy just stepped right in front of us, i guess queues dont matter here. We realize the next window over has an english speaking agent, but not enough, the first question we asked (when is the next train?) he just waved his hands and pointed us one over.

This lady was able to help us, she said the next train was 1316, it was 1247. Given how difficult wandering around the Beijing trainstation was, we elected to take the 1400 train. Unnecessary, this station was much smaller, and security was much quicker, we made the rounds checking the food options, settling on a fried chicken place. I had a wrap and laura had a sandwich, both were pretty good, I honestly cannot remember the last time i had KFC or Churches or Popeye’s so i have no reference for good fastfood chicken. I was satisfied with the 4USD we spent on lunch.

We boarded the train, and 25 minutes later disembarked in Suzhou.

Suzhou is not a small town ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzhou ) metro area is over 10 million people. And when we got out of the station, it was even more “stereotypical asia” than anywhere we have been so far. there were scooters everywhere, ignoring traffic lights, laws, and safety. It was crazy, we saw some pedestrians come within 2 feet of getting hit by a bus.

We got to our hotel, a Holiday Inn, and it is pretty good. we got a high floor room with a view of the city, and the room is enormous. by far the largest room we have had in asia, and probably the largest non-suite hotel room i have ever stayed in.

We did some research and rolled out for a sweet pork place.

Maps are terrible here, whatever mapping company that has the ok from the PRC to map this area really needs to get its shit together.

We headed to the location the internet claimed this restaurant was at. It required us to walk a good two miles, some of which down a rather dark road parallelling one of the canals (yeah Suzhou was described as The Venice of the East). We didnt feel unsafe, like we were at risk of being a victim of crime, just at risk of walking into the canal or getting hit by a scooter.

when the pork place was NOT on the map, we resolved to go back to a noodle place we walked past on the way.

We walked in, and clearly couldnt read the menu, we asked for the hostess/waitress/co-owners recommendation, and she wiped out an english map. I had a beef and noodles thing, and laura had a rice noodle and beef thing.

Both were excellent, there were little round things in mine, that laura said we mushrooms, i ate one, noted the deliciousness and gave one to her, then ate another, and realized there is no way mushrooms would taste like this; this is beef intestines. I happily ate the beef intestines, and noodles, laura ate her glass noodles, contented, we resolved to hit one of the pastry shops we saw on the way here.

We picked up some sweets, and headed the 2 miles back home.

I got a blueberry sweet bread, it was a sort of french toast bread, with blueberry jam inside, i will make every effort to eat this every day in Suzhou.

Full of spicy noodles and sweet breads, we went home to watch TV and go to sleep.