Day 6 & 7

Day 6 (Monday, March 20)

Monday was a day for Chelsie and I to spend walking around Suzhou. After going to drinking street last night, I thought Chelsie would like to go down there today. We proceeded to walk down there because it was such a nice day. The block before Drinking Street was the alleyway to the Master of the Nets Garden. We didn't go in, but there were some small shops along the entryway to the garden where we shopped for a little while. Chelsie bought two perfume bottles that were painted from the inside. She paid about $10 US for each bottle and as we shopped at the other shops we found out that she was ripped off for the price she paid. She tried returning them, but the lady soon acted like she didn't speak any English and didn't give her a refund. Oh well, as long as she is happy with the gift she got, it all evens out. At the fake market, she bought lots of things for an average price of $5 US. Anyway, after we shopped there we walked along drinking street, but when we were there (approx. 11am), most shops didn't seem to be open yet. So we just walked around and walked back to our hotel. We got some good pictures of the scenery and just normal life here in Suzhou.

At the hotel, we thought we would do an American afternoon. We watched a Edison on my laptop, ate lunch at the hotel restaurant, and then went down to the fitness room and swimming pool. In the fitness room I rode the bike and lifted weights on the all in one fitness machine that they had. Chelsie ran on the treadmill and lifted weights too. We waited until 5:00 when the pool opened because we wanted to go into the hot tub. We told them we wanted to go into the pool and the staff said that we had to wear a swimming cap. So they gave us this pink, orange, and yellow flowery swimming cap that was obviously made for the chinese. They were so small that we barely fit them on our heads. Come to find out, they didn't have a hot tub so we settled for the cold pool and then went into the sauna that was in our locker room. Virginia said most houses in her neighborhood have saunas in them (very nice).

Our parents met us back in our hotel rooms and we headed down to the hotel restaurant for dinner. After dinner, we thought we would head back out to drinking street because we wanted to get more DVDs. I ended up getting about 10-15 more DVDs and Kim got a few as well. Everyone was tired so we went back to the hotel and retired for the night.

Day 7 (Tuesday, March 21)

Tuesday was gardens day. Susan is Steven's wife and he works with our parents at Eclipse. Susan was nice enough to pick us up at the hotel at 9:30am and take us to a few gardens. First up was Tiger Hill, "The Number 1 attraction in Suzhou". It was very nice inside the gardens and it is well known for a leaning building. Susan said that this was the first leaning building and then in Italy, of course, was the Leaning Tower of Pisa. After walking around for about an hour and a half and taking lots more pictures, we headed to lunch. We all ate at KFC and I remembered how spicy their chicken was. Chelsie had to use the restroom so Susan showed her were it was and while we were waiting she came back out really fast. She told me that she didn't use the restroom because it was just a hole in the floor. I told her she should take a picture of it next time.

Next stop was the Humble Administrator's Garden. This was a huge garden that had some beautiful scenery and lots of water features. I love the water and the different bridges they have running across the rivers. This garden also had a little area of all different kinds of bonsai trees. One bonasai tree was approx. 250 years old! The guy who works there told Susan that he had just repotted the plant because of how big it was. After another hour in the garden we exited and shopped around a little bit. I bought some little things, but that was about it. We got back into the car and headed for our hotel. Chelsie and I then watched another movie on my laptop. We watched "Walk The Line" which was pretty good and waited for our parents to come pick us up for dinner.

For dinner we went to the Drunken Chef. This was like an Australian Restaurant that had anything from Australian burgers to mexican food. I had an Australian BBQ Burger which was pretty good. After dinner we went back to the hotel for the night.