March 7, 2015 The last few days have been great and we have been able to see lots of amazing things. On Thursday, we decided to see more of Shanghai and took a hop-on hop-off bus tour. They are always pretty “touristy”, but it’s really the easiest way to see a bigger view of the city while getting some highlights in English. Can I just say that I will NEVER attempt to drive in Shanghai…it is CRAZY! Sitting on the top level/front row of the bus, I thought we were going to hit cars/people/bikes/etc during the entire trip. Lane lines mean absolutely nothing here and traffic signals don’t seem to matter much either. If you are walking or riding a motor bike (tons of them here), you had better watch out! We were glad that we took the bus because we were able to see some things that we missed with our walking on Wednesday. We thought that we had seen The Bund area on Wednesday, but it turned out we were completely wrong! The Bund was actually the area on the waterfront with beautiful views of both sides of the river. It was a very cool view because on one river bank is all the new development with the big sky scrapers and very modern looking buildings with the other side being more stone buildings that looked more influenced by European architecture. My highlight was finding a Pepsi stand…I actually love this idea of the little car that sells drinks and I totally want to get this to take to my stores when we get back!  🙂 It was pretty funny that they had a bull just like they do on Wall St in New York City. Just about 10 years ago when Adam and I first went to NYC, we took a picture with the bull and got to recreate it in Shanghai. Lol I have to admit that while we were walking around, Hayden and I broke down and had McDonalds for lunch. I am too much of a weenie to eat food off the side of the road, I really don’t want to spend the next few days with stomach problems! I have to say that the McD’s tasted just about the same. I guess McNuggets and French Fries are the same everywhere. On Friday morning, we got up to head to the train station to spend the day in Suzhou. I have to say that we are pretty awesome at getting around. We were able to buy the correct tickets, find the train and make it to the city with no problems at all! We took the high speed train which was pretty cool…they track the speed and we got up to 270 km/hr. Suzhou was very different from Shanghai…not much in English and pretty much no one speaks any English either. We got a map when we first arrived, so we could at least match up the characters on the street signs and find our way around. We made it to our first destination which was the North Pagoda and it was very cool. There were several very neat statues inside of the area. It is off peak season, so we had the place just about to ourselves. We walked around and took our time in the gardens and going through the buildings. From there, we were heading down to another garden and were stopped by a guy selling river cruises. We wanted to go on a cruise anyway, so figured we would just go for it. Negotiating and trying to get a scheduled tour is a bit of a challenge when we don’t speak Chinese and they don’t speak English. We thought that we had purchased a river boat cruise, but it turned out to be a city tour with several different stops. It was a decent tour except it was all in Chinese and we had no idea what they were saying! The highlight for Hayden was that he seemed to be famous. He had a couple of people ask to take pictures with him and the lady sitting in front of him kept taking selfies with him (which he loved). She gave him some candy, so he was happy to smile. Lol On the last stop of the tour, we realized we were near Tiger Hill Pagoda and decided to just jump off of the bus tour and head off on our own. Tiger Hill was BEAUTIFUL! It was a large area with lots of buildings, gardens, water, and the center pieces of the area, Tiger Hill Pagoda. There were so many areas to walk through and it was very peaceful. We spent a couple of hours going through the areas. It’s amazing to think that this place was built in 967 AD and is still standing. They were doing some restoration work while we were there, but nothing too significant. There was some interesting information explaining why the tour is leaning and why it won’t tip over…it has to do with the density of the ground in different areas under the Pagoda. The pictures don’t do it justice, but here are a few of the areas that we liked best. After haggling with several taxi drivers to get a ride back to the train station, we got a good deal and made our way back to the hotel in Shanghai. Tomorrow (Saturday) is going to be a “lazy” day at the hotel. Hayden is looking forward to going to the pool and not walking for the day. On Sunday we will be taking the bullet train to Beijing!