Trip to Suzhou

This past weekend we decided to celebrate St. Patrick's Day in the heart of China's rich Irish heritage - Suzhou! We left Friday after school and took the 8:30 train to Suzhou, which is about an hour west of Shanghai.

We stayed at the Holiday Inn - we were amazed at how nice it was. We made the trip with two teachers from SMIC (Laura and Jayme) and Jayme's husband, Channing (who works at the company). Laura's fiance, Thomas, lives in Suzhou, so that was extremely helpful to us. It's also nice that Channing speaks fluent Chinese (he's from Texas, but his parents are Chinese).

We visited one of the many gardens that Suzhou is famous for, shopped at markets, went on a boat tour of the city, and saw a silk factory. On Saturday night we went out to a Mexican buffet and took in the Suzhou laser show at the lake. Not exactly the Bellagio, but it was pretty cool.

It was a great getaway, but like all weekends, it went by much too quickly. We definitely want to go back and see the rest of the city (and stay at the Holiday Inn).

Leaving from the train station is always hectic. Not the most organized situation here.

The Suzhou crew (from left to right): Laura Hunt, Channing and Jayme Chen, and some chick that kept following me around.

We were pretty excited about our room at the Holiday Inn. The Holiday Inns in China are nothing like the ones in the States - they're really nice over here.

Outside one of the parks in Suzhou.

Suzhou is a city with many canals running through it. Mandy and I took a little boat tour of the city. Kind of like a gondola ride in Venice.

The first mate and the skipper. No, I'm not standing on a step.

This is taken at the Master of Nets Garden. Suzhou is famous for its gardens - this is one of the smaller ones. It's famous for its use of space - some artsy thing that I don't really understand - it just sounds cool to tell people that.

We visited the Suzhou Silk Factory on Sunday afternoon. We were able to walk around the production line to see how the silk is collected.

The silkworm cocoons are boiled and then the silk is threaded onto spools that collect the silk - it's amazing.

The trip back to Shanghai was crowded! We barely squeezed into our seats.