Day 2 - Suzhou and Shanghai at Night

Our second day in Asia started off with long bus ride to Suzhou, pronounced Sue Jo. Suzhou is the world capital of silk production. In China, Suzhou is considered a "town" of 6 million people! Our first stop was the Master of the Nets gardens with its 900 year old pine trees.

Our next stop was at the silk factory.  These are the silk worms munching on mulberry leaves. Each silkworm produces about one mile worth of silk in the form of the cocoon.  It takes 8 cocoons to make one thread of silk and 8,000 silk worms to make one silk blanket!

Aside from being known for silk, Suzhou is known for being the Venice of China.  So, after spending a bit of money in the silk factory store, we went on a boat ride on Suzhou's Grand Canal. The canal is a man made river almost 1,100 miles long.

The people who live in the houses on the canal are typically elderly.  The houses are hundreds of years old and most have not been adapted for indoor plumbing! They put their "honey pots" on their steps each day and they are taken away, cleaned and returned each evening.

After getting back to Shanghai, Darren and I set out to explore a bit.  We wandered down to The Peoples Park.

We saw this sign on the way into the park and I just couldnn't get over how much they LOVE American fast food in Shanghai! In this one building was Starbucks, KFC, Pizza Hut, McDonalds and Burger King!

It was getting dark as we started walking own Nanjing Road which is considered the high fashion shopping area like Rodeo Drive or 5th Avenue.  It looks more like Vegas though!

One of the stores had an Angry Birds stuffed animal display in it.

We then walked back to the Bund because we heard it was even prettier at night.  It did not disappoint.  It looked so nice without all that terrible fog!