Below, you can see the stores we went through, as well as the boys already having these pancake wraps in their hands!
Not much further down, we came upon a shop with skewers! Of course, we had to have that, too, so we got a skewer of chicken, one of beef, and one of squid (Kel's fav).
After that, we crossed the road to QiPu Road and roamed the local shops. We didn't have much luck seeing things we were interested in bargaining for. Our first attempt came when Kel came upon a pair of jeans. The tag was set at $268RMB and we've been told the max to ever pay for anything was 50%, (which would put it at $134RMB,) and if you're real good, you should be able to talk them down to 30%. So we figured we'd start at $100RMB and set a max of $150RMB... what we didn't realize was that, the tag was the retail price and this was a distributor building?! The shop owner started his price at $120RMB, which we couldn't help but show a funny look...so we lost that battle and just paid the $120RMB... We had better luck later on, scoring a messenger bag for Sunny. We were able to talk the girl down from $380RMB to $170RMB, so we were happy with that. (Did we pass Jas? :) We got wary of looking through the shops after a while, and went back outside to hit the street food. We gave the chinese version of tacoyaki balls a try, which weren't that great.. it was just gooey in the middle with nothing but dough. And to top it off, they put ketchup on it as a dressing! We ended up throwing the rest of it out. Next, we tried a bowl of sour and spicy noodles, which weren't bad. :)
After that, we decided to hit the Chenghuang Miao (Temple of the Town Gods), but before we started walking, Sunny said he could use a snack... so they boys got the two flavours of wings at McDs and I tried their red bean pie.
The trek to the temple was slightly confusing as it was surrounded by more shops and street food. We actually located another Starbucks, Dairy Queen, and Haagen Dazs, before finding the temple.
And inside... you can see Sunny tried to take a picture with one of the "monks" (for lack of a better word)..
And here we have Sunny pointing to a statue inside the temple (I find that he likes to do that.. :P) and Kel hiding under the bell.. (I was sure we'd get kicked out soon..)
After that, what did we do? More street food! These crabs caught our eye... We thought they'd be similar to soft shell crabs being on a stick and all, but no. The shells were quite hard, so we ended up giving up on them after a bit.
After wandering around a bit, we found the gardens Jas' dad recommended to us and we ventured into the Yuyuan Gardens. It was actually a pretty nicely structured garden and well worth the $40RMB/person admission. Below are a few pictures from there. And of course, we'll start off with one of Sunny sneaking into the displays and posing on the chairs.
After that, we headed to XinTianDi for.. another Starbucks and tried to get our bearings, before deciding to go locate the massage place to book an appointment for later that night, and then went for peking duck for dinner. We had time to spare between dinner and our massage appointments, so we headed back to XinTianDi to look around. We found the Haagen Dazs Jas noted there :) and wow, that one served wine, too! We each had a scoop of ice cream, but that wasn't enough for Sunny! He had a slice of cheesecake, too! We dropped by the DR Bar that Jas' dad recommended as well for drinks, before heading for our massages.
omg so much food!!!
ReplyDeleteYou know, there didnt use to be an admission fee for yeyuen~ it used to be u could just walk right in! but i guess since it is totally a tourist spot, it's smart of them to start charging ppl :-P
Enjoy your tour of suzhou tmr!