8/17/12
Early start today. Up at 5:30, breakfast, and on the bus by 7:30. Mom was pretty tried yesterday, hope she is enjoying the trip. Tonight we start the cruise portion, which will hopefully be a little more relaxing.
Driving to Shuzhou (a small city of only 13 million) is interesting. After we got out of Shanghai, it's mostly countryside but then there will be a bunch of high rise condos- 10 or more, each 20+ stories. Lots of construction here. Many of them look empty.
Old Shuzhou is nice but also hot. It's named the Venice of China, so of course we're off the bus and into a little boat for a tour of the canals. Just like Venice, the canals seem to be the back alleyways here too! Not so romantic in either place, but at least you get the good looking gondoliers in Venice.
Next stop, No. 1 Silk Spinning Factory. I remember growing silk works in school, so it's interesting to see how it's spun into thread. 1 cocoon can produce up to 300 meters of silk. They twist eight silks into a single thread. One set of sheets takes about 6,400 cocoons. The "factory" is clean, shiny, and air conditioned. Which brings me back to my thought from yesterday wondering what the real factory looks like.
Nice work here too, but also pricey. I did buy a big pillow cover that will pack nicely and wont be much work to carry about for the rest of the trip. I'm sure they are nice, but I can't imagine paying the $500 they were asking for sheet sets. Hoped they might have silk yarn that I could bring back for Stephen, but no such luck.
Lazy Susan lunch again. I enjoyed it, but some of the others were getting a little picky.
After lunch we stopped at Shuzhou Garden. Very nice, but too hot to really enjoy. Next time, October.
Now we're in the road to Nanjing. Nanjing is the former capital city (BC before communism). Apparently we're not doing much except board the ship. The drive reminds me of central Florida. So humid you can see it hanging in the air.
Now on the ship, the Viking Emerald. Pretty nice accommodations, and I am quite certain that I am the youngest passenger on the ship. Nice dinner. We were suppose to sail at 8 p.m., but delayed for "traffic on the river", which I hope is not code for something is broken. Should be sailing soon. Only complain at this point is the extremely slow Internet. But then, I am posting a blog from ship sitting on the yangtze river on the other side of the globe...perhaps I should expect a certain amount of sluggishness.
Sent from my iPad
Sent from my iPad
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