The day after we visited
Zhujiajiao, we took a day trip to
Suzhou from our base in
Shanghai. Suzhou is very close to Shanghai (only about 45 minutes by train) and has a long history of tourism. It was a center of silk production in ancient China. Marco Polo visited it when he visited China. It's famous for its canals and gardens--earning it the nickname "Venice of the East." It does have some canals, but Zhujiajiao had a lot more and better canals. "Venice of the East" is a bit of an exaggeration, but we did enjoy Suzhou. We basically just visited three things: the Suzhou Silk Museum, the North Temple Pagoda and the
Master-of-Nets Garden. I knew very little about silk, so the silk museum was interesting, but there wasn't much to see (I didn't even take any pictures!). The North Temple Pagoda and the Master-of-Nets Garden were both well worth visiting.
The North Temple Pagoda.
Suzhou as seen from the North Temple Pagoda.
The North Temple Pagoda is an active Buddhist temple complex. In addition to the Pagoda, there were a couple temple buildings and some monks.
One of Suzhou's canals.
Map of the Master-of-Nets-Garden.
Inside one of the buildings at the garden.
One of the doorways at the garden.
My favorite part of the garden was around this pond.
Me at the Master-of-Nets garden.
The next day
we wrapped up our time in Shanghai by visiting the Yuyuan Gardens before
heading to Hangzhou next.
