Suzhou

Today began with check-up for Glynis at her doctor. Apparently Peanut may be making his/ her way into the world sooner rather than later! The doctor told Glynis that the baby would probably be born in two or three weeks - a couple of weeks ahead of schedule. She also gave Glynis the green light to travel to Suzhou.

After the check-up, we walked to the nearest metro station and made our way to the main train station to catch the train to Suzhou. At the main station, we managed to find our way to get tickets and they even had an English speaking counter. The tickets were dirt cheap - 15 RMB each. Once we had our tickets, we went to hang out at the waiting lounge with about a million other people (ok - a slight exaggeration) for an hour or so before the train was due to leave.

Although the train wasn't the fast train that we expected, it was only a 45 minute journey to Suzhou. Once we arrived, we spent a bit of time scouting out where we should go and how we should get there. Luckily we literally ran into a woman selling maps so we picked one up, headed to the taxi rank and made our way to the center of town.

After lunch, we decided to head to Tiger Hill - a monument and garden on the highest point of Suzhou. It was late afternoon by the time we arrived and the light and the temperature were just perfect for wandering around. It was really picturesque as you can see by the photo and definitely worth the visit.

We spent a few hours there and then tried to find a taxi back into town - easier said than done. There were a few taxis but they refused to take us into town as the traffic was too bad. Finally one taxi driver took pity on us and agreed to drop us near the center of town.

We forgot that most of the attractions closed at 5pm so not much was open by the time we got back into town. We wandered around a bit before getting tired and decided to try and get to the train station. We faced the same problem with taxis and ended up walking around for quite a while before one agreed to pick us up and take us to the station.

We had bought our return tickets already so it was just a matter of waiting an hour and a half before our train left at 7.20pm. We were all pretty tired so it was actually quite nice just to sit for a while after walking all day. This time, the train was a high-speed train so the journey back was a bit quicker. After negotiating the metro again, we ended up near Kevin and Glynis' place where we had a quick bite at Blue Frog before falling into bed exhausted after a great day.