last weekend we finally gathered the courage to brave the crowds and buy a train ticket to suzhou… actually, the ticket-buying experience was quick and painless, much unlike what i had anticipated – especially in this time of the year.

anyway, the trip went smoothly, the weather was gorgeous, and the city was actually quite friendly. i lack the vocabulary to describe architecture, but you know the tranquility that comes with a “coherent” architecture? that’s how the city center looked to me, with its white walls and dark roofs, more or less aligned till the horizon. un-chaotic.

the choice of things to visit is quite large, so we picked one of each: a pagoda, a unesco garden and a museum, all more or less close to each other … the rest of the day, we spent geocaching :)

so, for the first stop, we chose the north temple pagoda. it’s an octogonal pagoda, 9 floors height, filled with best wishes scribbled all over the yellow walls. and naturally, from up there you can see all of suzhou in a glance.

here is the mini photo-report:

speaking of suzhou, jonna writes a great blog from there. i never get tired of reading her adventures in learning mandarin and trying to understand the way chinese people think. we’ve been through more or less the same situations, so it’s a very accurate description of our “expat life” as well :)