Suzhou

After breakfast, we boarded our flight to Shanghai and then on the bus to Suzhou.  We learned about the pollution levels in each city.  Apparently Xian was at 150 which would explain why I have been feeling like a cold has been coming on.  Really can't believe the problem until you see it with your own eyes.  The fact that the country continues to poison it's own people is unbelievable.  We would be able to escape for a short time in Suzhou (pronounced Sue-Joe), where the pollution level was 20.  It didn't look nor feel like it was at that level.  We drove past 4 massive coal stacks, all of them spewing grey smog into the air.  I have yet to see any wind turbines, although I have seen solar panels on a few roofs of homes.  Not a lick of green energy however to be seen.

Suzhou is an ancient water village line with canals and nicknamed 'Venice of the Orient".  It is at the heart of the Yangtze Delta in the south of Jiangsu province.  Multiple bridges, most beautiful with architecture, pagodas and classical gardens line the canals that cover 42% of the city.  It is a well preserved city.

It was already getting dark  upon arrival, so there wasn't much time to wander.  I did however have time to find a geocache.  I wanted to be able to find a physical cache in China and it was roughly 2 blocks away from the hotel.  I was able to go out with cousin Anne and take a look at Ren Min Bridge.  The carvings at the underside of the bridge were lit up and it was a nice tourist draw.  I only had a photo of the cache location to go by since I did not bring my GPS, so I really did brute force this find.  My map on my phone didn't accept coordinates entered.  Of course the cache was at the last of the 4 corners of the bridge we attempted to scour. We were fortunate that the night air was mild and dry.

After discovering the cache, roughly searching for an hour or so, headed out to an Italian restaurant for dinner and a couple glasses of wine.  It was a nice way to end the evening.

JA