Suzhou

I had bought a ticket to fly to Hong Kong on the 4th but was not enjoying Shanghai so decided to go to Suzhou for a couple of days. Suzhou is known for its channels and gardens. The channels reminded me more of Venice then of Amsterdam but really the city did not have enough to match either of these European cities.

The Gardens were similar to the Yuyuan garden that I visited in Shanghai. They are mostly rock gardens with pools and temple looking buildings. I visited 3 of these gardens; Garden for Lingering In, Blue Wave Pavilion and Garden of the Master of the Nets. The guidebook said that the Garden of Master of the Nets was better than all the other gardens in the city and of the 3 I visited it was the one I liked the least. I think I enjoyed the Garden for Lingering In the best. I enjoyed the area with a large number of bonsai trees and also found this area with the flowers really pretty.

I also visited a couple of temples while in Suzhou. First was the West Garden Temple. When I got there the ticket office appeared to be closed but a guy was letting people out so I tried to peek around the door to see in and he waved me in. I looked around and when I went to leave I found out I had just came to the wrong place to buy a ticket so got to look at this temple without a ticket. I also visited the Suzhou Confuses Temple. I just came across it while walking along and it was free so walked around it even though it was not in my guidebook.

On the way to the city wall I walked through a market that was selling all sort of stuff that live in water. There were frogs, turtles, eels, shrimp, all sorts of fish for sale and what looked like snakes. I had seen some of these things in a supermarket in Nanjing but found it really interesting walking around this market.

This is a picture from the area around the Coiled Gate of the city wall with the Ruiguang Pagoda in the background.