Zhou Zhuang Water Town

I'll preface this entry with a couple statements:

1. Don't ever drive to a water town on a weekend in Shanghai.
2. If you've seen one water town, you've seen them all.

That's probably not a great spirit to have and I'm sure there are plenty of reasons to see all of the different local villages. We decided to take Mal to visit one of the local water towns that show traditional Chinese life. There are many small towns that sit on water and they are called the Chinese Venice's. One of them, not sure which, was used for filming Mission Impossible III.

We also invited a colleague of Kirk's to join us since he was still in town. Neil DeKoker joined us in our journey. So we took off from Shanghai around noon and reached the water town about 1.5 hours later. The kids were good in the car. That is where the "good kids" part ends.

We walked into the city and there are a lot of small alleyways leading to a where the water was. There were a lot of people today since the weather was nice. We walked over some bridges and walked along the water canal.

It was lunchtime and we decided that we should get something to eat. This is the season for Hairy Crabs so we looked for a restaurant that had them. Now there are many restaurants here, but they are basically the size of your dining room and you are not sure which one serves good food. You typically look for the busy ones. However, not one of them alone seemed that busy. We just picked one and hoped we'd get lucky. The food was okay. The kids were bad. They didn't want to sit still. Elizabeth had to go potty twice and it was a 10 minute walk to and from the nearest toilet. I had no control. Kind of embarrasing when a work colleague is with you. Thank goodness Neil has grandkids and understood. Or at least he didn't voice his opinion!!!

After lunch, we took a boat ride. This was really nice. The "captain" of the boat sang songs for us and gave us a good ride. It was short but good for us to see the canals and bridges.

After the ride, we shopped for a bit and then decided to head back. We got stuck in traffic in Shanghai on the way home. A 1.5 hour trip took 3 hours! Elizabeth had to go potty but there was no where to stop. As soon as we got into the city, Liu found an exit and we went to a hotel, she was relieved!

I think that is our last water town trip!