Sunday started out to be another wet day and also very cold but gradually as the day progressed the rain stopped, but decided we had to do some sightseeing so headed off up to the silk Museum which was quite interesting and while there met an American couple who told us that the local museum was worth visiting. It is a relatively new museum and unlike everything else in China was actually free and everything was well displayed and although there were hundreds of people there it was not a problem viewing everything and all the captions were written in both Chinese and English. From there we walked on down a narrow street, alongside one of the many canals in the city which was a different route back to our accommodation. We had about an hour to spare before we caught a bus at 6pm to take us down to a jetty to do a night cruise on the Grand Canal. We were there with ¾ hr to spare and decided to sit on the top deck to have a better view. It was lovely to see the city lights and all the bridges are so well lit up with the lights changing colours - the Chinese do have some amazing lighting effects. Up on the top deck we ended up talking to a young Chinese girl, Bonny who had very good English, worked in Beijing and coincidentally was staying at the same hostel as us, so she travelled back with us on the bus, but we got off a stop earlier as we had not had any dinner. As Bonny was heading back to Shanghai early on Monday morning to fly back to Beijing she left us her contact details and we are hoping to be able to catch up with her in Beijing over the weekend.
On Monday we went walking down one of the canal streets which is in the very old part of Suzhou and stopped to have a cappuccino in a lovely little shop - the first decent cup of coffee we have had in China. Just after 5pm we left the hostel, stopped at a little place for some dinner and then caught a local bus to the railway station for our train trip to Beijing. We were at the station a good 1 ¾ hrs early and then the train was an hour late. Our hard seats were not as bad as the last time we had a hard seat, but the train was absolutely packed with people having standing tickets as well for a 15hr trip. The train did make up a bit of time so we arrived in Beijing about 20 minutes late. We then caught a bus outside the station and 14 stops later arrived within a short walk from the hostel. The hostel is in an old hutong part of Beijing and we have a nice room. We didn't do much yesterday as we were feeling pretty weary so had a rest for a couple of hours - Dave had a sleep but I didn't. The hostel has Wi-Fi but for some reason it will not come up on my computer and the staff here do not know how we can fix it. They all speak good English.
Today we went via the Metro, taking two trains to have a look around the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square - both being huge. We just walked around part of the wall to the Forbidden City as inside consists of Palaces and temples and Dave has had enough of them. While walking to the Forbidden City we met up with an artist who took us into his gallery. His English was excellent and we were a bit lost when he asked if he could help with directions etc. and we somehow got talking and we asked him what he did, so he showed us. The long shot is we bought a small painting of his which is done on rice paper and one of another artists of the Great Wall which is done on rice paper and silk for a total of just over $NZ80 - nice mementos of China for us. This guy, Sandy is taking a group of students to NZ for 2 weeks in February to attend some art thing he said at Wellington University, but I do wonder if it is at the Polytechnic.
Tomorrow morning we head off at 7.30am for a trip to the Great Wall and are going to an area where there are not so many tourists.