All things Chinese - Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou

Have I said it already, we were pleasantly surprised with our introduction to China and these 3 cities in south eastern China did not dissapoint They were each about 3 hours bus ride apart, and were in the economic centre of China. Each had old and new districts, evident in the multi modern highrises. We visited and stayed in all 3, and stayed quite close to the city centres.  

This afforded us many opportunities to take in lovely scenery, stunning parks and gardens, lakes and canal rides, street food, local restaurants, walled gardens, local crafts, countryside, markets, and even though we broke from our tour group to have some optional free time, we still managed to find Shanghai’s upmarket Nanjing Rd and Yuyuan Markets. We had views from 88 stories high and rode on the fastest train in the world the “maglev” at 451 km per hour.  We really got a good feel for the culture and diversity.  

We even got use to ordering local food for lunches and dinner,  and hung out with four of our travel buddies to explore Shanghai via the Subway system (which was all very orderly colour coded and also in English).  How brave were we?  Breakfast at our hotels was a little hit and miss, Derek found himself having fried rice for breakfast one morning!