When E.F. Hutton speaks......

It is July in Suzhou and that means one thing, it is time for the annual Lotus Blossom Festival at Humble Administrators Garden. I told Scott earlier this week that I would like to go this weekend, so we all got up this morning at the crack of dawn to "beat the heat" and see the garden. We were pleasantly surprised when we stepped outside at 730 to find that it really wasn't that bad. We took a taxi (of course) to the garden and proceeded to go to the ticketing counter. Along the way we go bombarded with "self employed foreigner hunters" trying to "sell" us canal rides. We must have been approached 4 times before we got to the counter and we were only 50 meters from the counter. "No thank you", "no thank you" in Chinese is what Scott kept saying, I was pleading ignorance ~ only 4 weeks in the language is still at "ni hao"... We purchased our tickets and proceeded inside the gate to view the vast expanse of the garden. This garden is on the World Culture Heritage site for one of the must see places to visit, and I concur. We took a ton of photos (Scott took 220 and I took almost 200). This afternoon we (Scott) was working on uploading them to his Google Picasa site, BUT it appeared to have been "not working" this afternoon (aka blocked). So we will try tomorrow to see if we can get them uploaded. Scott kept saying that when he visited the garden in February it was very winter like (brown). Today, the garden was lush and green and full of people. There were tour groups from all over, but the one that stood out were the two groups of Western tourists (because they looked like us). The garden was very beautiful, if I tried to describe it here I could not even come close to doing it justice ~ you will have to wait for the photos...

We got back to the apartment before noon (we left at 7:45am to beat the heat ~ did I say that already) and we had lunch and vegged all afternoon. Scott and I ventured to Carrefour to find a plastic spatula (for L.L. Bean pancakes in the morning, courtesy of our visit to Maine this summer) with blueberry jam and Maine maple syrup ~ yum!!). We hung out in the apartment all afternoon until Jim and Tammy called us with the meet up time for dinner. We decided to meet downstairs in the lobby at 645pm to get taxis to the restaurant.

When we told the boys where we were going they were kind of skeptical, but Scott reassured them that it would be really, really good and that they will totally enjoy it. We took the taxi to the restaurant, and as soon as we stepped out of the cab, the look on Jacob's face was "hell no, I'm not going in there...." We walked up the steps, on the left of the stairs the cooks were outside cooking the bread for something ~ Tammy says "hey boys, do you want to go watch", "nope, we're good" they both said. So up the steps we go into the restaurant, and thank God Jim knows Chinese. The hostess starts saying something to me (LOL) and I just look back at them and laugh. As we get further inside, the place goes quiet (when E.F. Hutton speaks...) because we were the only white non Chinese family(s) in the joint. He says (in Chinese) "upstairs" so we go upstairs, not until more "conversation" between the hostess and me (again LOL). Again, as we get upstairs, heads turn and the place goes quiet, "look at those white devils" is what we thought they were saying. The hostess goes up to a table who was already seated and tells them to move, I think this was to get us in the center of the floor for all to see.

The waitress gives us a menu and the fun begins. I'll have that, and that, and that, and that, and that, and that. And how about some of that... Jim and Scott did the picking of food and the ordering, I was pretty sure that they were not going to order any fragrant beef (or at least I hoped that they did not ~ we will see in the morning!). A few minutes pass when the food begins to arrive. First it was the mutton skewers (all 18 of them), yes mutton (mature sheep), then comes the green beans with peppers and garlic, mutton burritos (not burritos but looked like them), the mutton pizza, dumplings, potatoes with sugar glaze, apples with sugar glaze, and then the watermelon. Needless to say a ton of food! There were 7 of us total eating the feast of mutton and we were all full! Did I mention that there were 9 'big' beers ordered also... When we were all nodding off from so much food, the waitress brings over the bill. I was expecting 500 rmb for all this food. I asked Scott how much, he says 248 ~ I thought he was telling me that was our portion, which really is not bad for all that food. Well he tells me that is for ALL the food and beer and 4 cans of sprites that the boys drank. Are you kidding me, 248 for all of that (that is 36$US ~ crazy!!!). And.... Sherpa's delivers from the restaurant, yea!!!

We had a good day, it's almost 10pm and the kids are still up watching a movie, shouldn't they be in bed???? Be looking for the new photos "soon", I will send a note out when they are finally uploaded.