This morning we headed to the hotel restaurant for breakfast. I'm always surprised by what different cultures eat for breakfast. Today was no exception. Scrambled eggs...no surprise there. Fried noodles...well we are in China. Pumpkin. hmmm....not sure about that one, although out of everything that was laid out, this was the most edible. The burners had been turned off and everything on offer was rather cold and greasy.
Giselle and her father picked us up and we headed to the Suzhou Museum where we saw a fascinating display of artifacts up to 5000 years old. It's quite difficult to comprehend when you come from a 200 year old country. Suzhou is known for it's magnificent and plentiful gardens, so next we went to the Garden of the Master of the Nets. This is said to be the most beautiful and the smallest...thankfully. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder of course, and it has cultural significance which adds to the beauty factor.
Lunch was at a Korean restaurant which was tasty and less eventful than the previous day.
At the end of the day we went to pick up a couple of the garments I had ordered, but they were not quite as ordered and needed to be re-done. Giselle and her mother weren't going to let anything get past them as they closely inspected all the seams and stitchings and made the tailor give me a free shawl and purses. Note to self....always take them shopping with me.
Driving in any asian country is always quite interesting and eventful. There don't seem to be road rules....and if they are, they're a well kept secret. People seem to drive where they need to go without worrying if anyone is in their way. We were almost home when, what I felt was the inevitable, happened....we had a "bingle". Whose fault it was will be left up to the insurance companies to fight out, but no-one was admitting guilt. Thankfully it was only a little bump and no-one was injured.
Our evening had been booked up to go to the House of Jazz and Blues Bar which is owned by Dongpu Lin, our MC for the concert we will do at the Oriental Arts Centre with the Shanghai Symphony Big Band. We were expecting to pop into the club and meet Mr Lin and basically schmooze a little. We got dolled up to the nines and headed out. At the club we were met by the PR team from the Oriental Arts Centre and we discovered we were to be photographed and interviewed. No problem. Then we saw the stage was set up with instruments. When we asked who was playing tonight, they replied "You are". hmmm....didn't get THAT memo. The house band is a blues band from the US who are in residency there for 4 months. We had a quick chat and worked out what they could play that we knew and vice versa and waited for Mr Lin to arrive to announce us. We're not sure what happened to Mr Lin, but he was somewhere else tonight, so we just got up and did our thing. Hopefully the PR people from the Arts Centre were happy with what we did and it helps the ticket sales.
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