A Saturday in Suzhou

 A few weekends back we wanted to get out of the city and explore a nearby town about an hour away called Suzhou.  We had been told by many that it was the "Italy" of China.  This was because of all of it's water ways, bridges, and rivers.  Many ways of transport are by water.  We made the mistake of not getting a map before we left of Suzhou so we spent much of the morning just trying to find anything, but eventually made it to a special garden called, "Lingering Garden."  We discovered how old China was by visiting this city.  Many of its original buildings, houses, some roads, and bridges were kept up to show tourists and locals.  Finally we got to see some real "China" looking buildings.  They were beautiful!

 They had many different little nooks where they had big rock formations that had special meaning of some sort.  We couldn't read everything, A) because it wasn't all in English, B) It would take too long and we had little ones, and C) I'll remind you that it is always at least in the high 90's or more these days. So...no standing around too long for us, unless we literally wanted to melt!  This place was also NOT A STROLLER FRIENDLY PLACE.  But, you live and learn, and we should have known because not many places in China are.

 Thought these boats were cool.

 Not very often do we get a family shot so thought we should!  Cambry is at the age that she NEVER looks.  She is always looking at something, just not the camera!

 Try pushing a stroller up this rock path!  It was all up and down or little paths!  Reese thought it was just awesome, but not too easy on the stroller.

 This is one of the 300 year old Ginko trees!  Eric was pretty amazed by that!

 You can't read this sign in this picture, but it states that this tree is 300 years old.  It is a Ginko!  Amazing!  It was so pretty!

 Everything was just landscaped so beautifully!

 Yes, I freaked out on Eric when I was looking through the camera and even screamed a little at him to be careful!  He still thinks it is funny to get me going!  (Not laughing!)

 They had so many different pictures made out of stone and rock on the ground, very cool!

 Fancy trash cans.  I thought Robin might like these so I took a picture!

 We did kind of cheat and follow a couple around who had a tour guide.  Well, we didn't really follow them, we just kind of moved at the same pace, so we did get to hear quite a bit of history on many of the things in this garden.  Very interesting!

 Reese thought this little area was neat because it led her right down to the water!

 You could see tons of Koi hiding underneath these lily pads.

 As we were walking we could hear this beautiful, almost harp like music, and it was coming from this lady.  I wish I knew what this instrument was called but it sounds just like what you hear in the movies. It was beautiful.  Tons of people gathered to watch her play.  Reese thought for sure it was Mulan at first until I told her sadly it wasn't, but she swore it had to be some sort of princess!  Ha, always princesses on the mind ;)

We wanted to see more but decided to head home after this because we just didn't know our way around this city.  It has 5 million people in it so it is fairly large, so just not worth getting lost.  We will definitely need to go back with a map and explore some more!