From Shanghai to Su Zhou and Su Zhou:Days Three and Four

I'm writing from day four, but about day three. Yesterday we took a train to Su Zhou. We waited for two hours in the "Soft-Seat" waiting room. We were supposed to get our tickets the day before, and we hadn't. So we waited. And waited. Finally, we got to the train. It was pretty hard because we have five huge suitcases and the seats were at bit cramped. The ride was about 45 minutes and wasn't as bad as we thought. When we got there, we discovered that we had to go down about 3 flights of stairs. These were no small flights of stairs. Once we got down one, we walked about 30 feet. After those 30 feet, guess what? We had to go up another flight of stairs. Then we went to our hotel. It is nice, but so confusing. It is meant to be like an old Chinese house, with beautiful gardens and winding, twisting hallways. I get so lost trying to find our room. Su Zhou is known for its gardens, and there is one right behind our hotel. It is huge and has about five different pagodas and temples. There are waterfalls, flowers, and old city walls that you could go up on. It reminded me of the Great Wall, with the stone and windows. After dinner, we took a boat ride down the Grand Canal. It is a man-made river that is from Beijing to Hangzhou. It is the longest canal in the world. The first 85 km were built in 500 B.C. It was fun to see the city all lit-up. There was a commentary to what we were seeing, but it was in Chinese.
On the fourth day, we got up and went swimming at our hotel. The pool was big and it felt good to get to go swimming. When we come to Su Zhou, we thought it would be a lot of old streets. Unfortunately, most of those old streets have been torn down. Still, there are some that still exist, and we went to one. The street we went to was called Shangtong Street. There were many little shops lining the street. The street was on a smaller canal, and there were houses on the other side. When I looked down the canal, I saw some great old boats. They were tied up by the houses and were made out of wood. Since Su Zhou is famous for its gardens, we went and saw another garden after going to Shangtong Street. We got to the garden by a Pedicab. A person rides a bicycle and tows you behind in a seat. It was really fun, but nerve racking. As I have said before, Chinese traffic is not American traffic. To merge into oncoming traffic, they turned into it. They turned in to oncoming car traffic in a Pedicab. This is not the most comforting thing there is. When we got to the gardens, we saw that it was a lot of someone's house than gardens. The house was interesting and we looked around at the sulcptures, walkways, and artifacts. There were some rock formations that you could climb on and look around. The rocks were pulled up from the bottom of a lake hundreds of years ago. We went back to the hotel and took another train ride to Hangzhou. We have not gotten Internet for a couple days, and this is the first time we have it. I'll post another blog later!
Lianne