Almost the very wrong city...

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Woke up wayy to early, hangover was starting to set in, and i was desperately thirsty. But we cant drink right from the tap, so i had to boil water, and then cool it enough to drink. I got through a few cycles of this before Laura also woke up not feelin so hot.

We drank some water, and then actually went back to sleep for a few hours.

When we woke up for the day in actuality, we packed up quick and headed back to the train station. I had a chance to look up train schedules, there was a train that went direct from Suzhou, to Hangzhou going through a few cities including Shanghai.

We went to the train station, and asked the ticket agent for the ticket to Hangzhou, she said something, we smiled and nodded, and then she started clicking away. A guy behind us spoke up asking where we were going, we said Hangzhou, and showed him the Characters, and he asked the agent if she got that. She didnt, she was going to send us to some other city that phonetically sounds like hanzhou. The guy helped us get it straghtened out, we paid our money, and went to the terminal to wait.

The train was only stopping for 10 minutes, so everyone piled in quick, and took their seats.

The children on the train were fascinated by us, i take it they dont see westerners very frequently.

We checked into our hotel, which is very nice. I dont know if i mentioned this earlier (and i no longer have full blown internets so i cannot check) but we got a “bump” to a nicer hotel. One of the first nights of our trip, while in Japan, I got an email from hotels.com saying the hotel we booked in Hangzhou could no longer honor our booking, and we needed to call them ASAP.

We let it go for about 2 weeks, and finally called. The hotels.com customer service rep apologized that it didnt work out, and got on his system looking for a new room, he asked what our reasoning for choosing that hotel was; i explained it is for leisure, and we chose that hotel because it was close to the things to see in Hangzhou. He said the only hotel he could find was about 1 mile away, but it was a 5 star hotel, (we booked a 3 star), and asked if it would be ok if we moved there.

I asked if that would change the price, as we had a budget, he assured me hotels.com would pick up the difference.

of course we took it.

So here we are at a nice 5 star hotel, within walking distance of all the things to see in Hangzhou.

After checking in we decided to check out the local Grandmas place (see earlier post), as it sounded like this was the first one. It was as good as the other one, but we got caught up when paying (ill get to that)

The walk to the restaurant took us around some of the West Lake (the whole reason people come to Hangzhou) and it was pretty beautiful.

They refused to take our Visa card, we had 2 other Chinese patrons saying its a Visa, and it should work, but they refused to swipe it. We didnt have enough cash, so laura had to leave me as collateral and go get more monies.

Dinner wasnt expensive, we just ran out of Yuan, and figured we’d be ok cause the other place took our card.

We then went home, Laura soaked in the 5 star tub, and we went to sleep.

Finally, craft beer

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Laziest day so far. We slept in and laid around until it was too late for us to get lunch in the hotel.

I did a bunch of transportation research, trying to figure out how to get to a craft Taphouse we spotted on the Internets when we first got here.

It required a train transfer and a bus. The buses are pretty easily navigable, And cost all of 1CNY.

Birdland https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g297442-d10456389-Reviews-Birdland_Craft_Beer-Suzhou_Jiangsu.html

This place was great, the beer was so fantastic, finally getting good beer in us was wonderful. We each had 4 Chinese beers, split a plate teriyaki chicken and rice, and a 12" pizza. And then on the way out we bought a bunch of Chinese beers for a sort of Pick-six. All for 600CNY.

The bus and trains took us home, we stopped for snacks, got back to the room eating the snacks and drinking some of the beers before passing out.

The Chinese upper crust, really liked their gardens

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Woke up to a beautiful day in Suzhou, 50F, sunny, limited smog, good day. We decided to walk to one of the very nice gardens, eat lunch, and hit up another garden.

The walk to the Lion Grove Garden took about 45 minutes, and introduced us to a different part of the city. The various canals make navigating without GPS pretty easy, as they are pretty significant landmarks.

This garden is nearly 700 years old, one of the very few that have survived the centuries. The signage in the garden claims the garden was "donated" to the Chinese government in 1949 by the family that had owned it for the previous decades, which is the same year that all private property was nationalized...

It is mostly a rock garden, similar to the rock seen in the Beijing gardens. These rocks are said to have looked like a lion, whch is where the garden gets its name. The garden was gorgeous, and very large. There were indoor reception areas, and tea drinking spots, and then all kinds of nooks and crannies outside, little man made caves and mountains, made of rocks stacked together and cemented together.

There were various informational points explaining that this spot was used for meditating, and this for observing nature.

After wandering around this garden we were ready for lunch.

I had spotted a place while we had the full google suite back in the hotel. This place was between the two gardens we intended to hit. When we found the place it was closed, more than closed for lunch, they were closed for business. BUT at the same time we were turning away, a Chinese couple was jut as surprised/disappointed as us, though they could read the sign... the place was no longer in business.

So we ate some street food. We had flaky meat pockets from a little storefront restaurant. We asked for meat, the kid behind the counter pointed at one, we asked for 2, he asked for 10CNY, and we went on our way. We think they were pork, but they were heavily seasoned with sesame, and they were pretty dry, the would however go very well with a beer, though we dont know what the open container laws are here, and Im not tryna be on locked up abroad ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banged_Up_Abroad ) for something as petty as drinking a beer on the street.

We made our way to the next garden, The Humble Administrator's Garden. This is a UNESCO heritage site, occupying over 50,000 square meters. The area has been a site of a garden of some kind or another since the 1150s, though it didnt become what we see today until the 16th century.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humble_Administrator%27s_Garden

This garden is what the architects of the Summer Palace in Beijing was emulating. It was pretty spectacular, a maze of paths and waterways, with more reception halls and minor residences throughout. They even had a bonsai garden that was very extensive.

At one point there was a gaggle of elderly Chinese tourists that were very excitedly taking pictures of a thing on top of a mini rock mountain. We saw them piling up to take pictures at the base, so obviously we took a picture ourselves. And then we walked around, and up the mini mountain to incpect more thuroughly. And there was nothing remarkable, no data plate telling us why poeple would take pictures of it. I think the key was in the tourguides...telling some anecdotal story that would mean alot to Chinese culture/history aficionados.

After this, we made the trek home, found a hotpot place, and ate. This was one of the moments where being a very obviously lost tourists is a benefit. The staff was super helpful, voluntarily busting out their phone to translate their Chinese, and help us along, while we had our phones out to translate our english to ask questions. We got a 1.5L beer, which came in a little table-tap, that tasted a little off. Turns out the Chinese cheat with their cheap beer like we do, but instead of using High Fructose Corn Syrup like we do in our PBRs and Milwaukee's Best, they use a rice mash in their Tsingtao and Snow beers.

We got a hotpot of bone soup, for extra flavor, then went to choose our ingredients. We went to the cooler/refrigerator (configured much like the egg/dairy section of a grocery store) to select vegetables and meats to throw in our pot. Everything comes on skewers to make it easier to cook, and to keep tab, as they charge straight up by number of skewers. After we ate some, one of the staff came over and offered to help us select what to eat.

Laura went with him to choose foods, and warned them that I cannot eat fish (i can eat fish, we just prefer to keep fishballs and other heavily fishy foods out of the hot pot, because the instant you toss a fishball into the broth, EVERYTHING now tastes like fish, pork belly now tastes like fish, cabbage; fish, fine sliced beef sirloin...fish).

The spread brought back was great, and the guy kept coming around and pointing out which stuff was done and ready to eat.

After clearing our hotpot, and our beer, we closed the tab, 105CNY, so $15 bucks, for 1.5L of beer and plenty of foods.

Not quite satisfied, we ordered cheap room service, partly because we have never done that before, inhaled the noodles that were delivered by the staff, and settled in to watch a movie.

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.