Mercure Suzhou Park

... selling some kind of food, and every third or fourth shop will be some sort of eating establishment. Grocery stores are interesting also because all of them will have numerous fish tanks, lobster tanks, eel tanks, snake tanks, and bullfrog tanks. Beside each tank is a small net. You reach in and grab what you want. Everything is alive when you net it. Pretty crazy.<br><br>Great restaurants here though and we're loving it!!

... decks have adveritising and video screens on them. Shanghai is lit up at night, only on weekends, so we got to see the City at its most colorful. Last night we went out to the Shangahi circus, an incredible acrobatic show. Stunning performers, kind of like cirque de soleil. The dinners are interesting - we are served family style, the tables all have a large lzay susan in the middle, and about 10 ...

... best part was this HUGE bowl of noodle soup with beef was only 4 kuai, which is $.53. AMAZING. Also, today was the first day of classes. It was not as bad as I was expecting. Though of course it was all in Chinese and I feel like I only understand about %25 of what they said to me. Including what the homework is..... oh well. Both of my teachers were super cute. The second teacher, was a little peppy girly girl with a high pitched voice that giggled after most of what she said. Also ...

... a couple getting their wedding photos take I headed to what is known as the 'Couples Garden' which was another 20 Yuan to enter and here I got angry at a couple for the first time this adventure. I was trying to take a photo and had been waiting for a tour group to move on and I was just about to Happy Snap when a couple who I know had seen me ...

... got. It got ridiculous though, after 10 minutes we left as Cody was getting too upset. All around the town they have markets, and some of the stuff is so beautiful. There was a man carving combs as we watched. And only in China could you see fish on a lead! Yes, in the canal, there were 2 fish tied to a lead in the water! We can only guess that ...

... We then continued walking down Huaihai Zhonglu over Chongqing Nanlu, Ruijin Erlu and finally made it to Shanghai's Bar District. The bar area runs down Huaihai Zhonglu. First stop was at Oscars Irish Pub. And how good was it to have a pint of cold Guiness, in a Guiness glass and poured from a frosty Guiness tap. Oh the things you miss..like Friday night Happy Hours at ...

... that desire. To be fair to the place, it's just at the final stages of its construction. In a couple of years it may be a vibrant fusion of English and Chinese styles. People will be driving from home to the 'commercial and recreational center' township core in golf carts and horse and buggies (one of which I saw as I was leaving for the bus station in a taxi). Time will tell if this corny idea will pan out or really look like 28 Days Later in a couple of years...

... were like a a war torn city. There were flashes of light reflecting off all the buildings and bangs and pops everywhere. When it hit midnight the noise and lights escalated beyond belief. From the window of Ting's parents apartment on the 13th floor, we were watching fireworks explode right outside the window. This didn't last for just 10 or 15 minutes but went on for a good 40mins to an hour. thats not counting the fireworks all night leading up to midnight. One word, amazing!

... Armed with a Lonely Planet guidebook we boarded a 24 hour train from Hong Kong to Shanghai. 24 hours is quite a long time on a train, but it gave us some time to meet our neighbors and read the guidebook. Since we planned on a tour, we did not do any research for this destination before hand. We managed to book some youth hostels from Hong Kong but we needed to plan our day to day activities. We would stick to the major cities, Beijing and ...

... day in Suzhou, I spent the majority of the day wandering along the canals and getting lost in the windy back streets, just as one should do in any good canal city. New and interesting finger food appeared here, including fried rice, battered and then deep fried. Brilliant. Vienetta on a stick remains a regular. And surprisingly for China, and even more surprisingly for a Chinese city with so much virtually stagnant water, Suzhou is devoid of any murky ...