Venice of the East

Due to its many canals and water roads, Suzhou is called "Venice of the East"... According to an old saying, "Paradise in Heaven, Suzhou and Hangzhou on earth." I can't wait for it to be Spring!

About 100 km away from the vibrant city of Shanghai, Suzhou is one of the oldest towns in the Yangze area. (I can't rewrite history... but you can read about it HERE.)

Today, was slightly warmer than the past two weeks...

A friend and I decided to go explore the Old Town of Suzhou.
After a 45 minute bus ride we finally arrived and to my surprise, even the old part of town is huge! I thought we could just walk around and see it all in a day... haha! Well we did walk A LOT but probably only saw a fifth! Not all of it is actually "old"..
We walked along what I now call the "wedding street" (a block with all you need to prepare for a wedding), the "place to go if you need a tool street", the shopping street... and "come here if you are craving KFC street" (seriously, it seemed like there was a KFC on every block).

This bridge was definitely the highlight of our day. Not far behind it is another bridge, called Wumen Bridge. That's the one we were originally headed to...
I guess there's a reason it's called the Panmen Scenic Area!



Along the canal, older men were doing Tai Chi (I think...)

I've been trying to take pictures of people, but I don't want to upset them and the whole language barriere makes it hard for me to ask if they're okay with it...


This driver was honking even when pushing his bike accross the bridge!
Notice the designed area for pushing bikes and motorcycles up and across?!?

One thing is true, there are bikes and motorcycles EVERYWHERE! oh and the motorcycles are electric (electric-cycles?) so you don't hear them.. which makes them quite dangerous... especially when the pull out of nowhere!!!
More about that another day.. :)