the Vencie of the far east

During our stay in Shanghai we took one day off to visit the city of Zhouzhuang (周庄镇), a town in Jiangsu province built around water with canal streets throughout big parts of the city. The town has, since a couple of years, a strong focus on tourism; despite that the town still is very beautiful and most of the houses feel and look genuine - at least on the outside..
There are a number of cities like this around China, but this is the most famous one.

We walked around the town for several hours - looking inside houses that used to belong to someone famous such as a Mayor or a government official.

A home entertainment system

After that we had lunch, among other things some lung fish, some of their famous pork and some much longed after ice cream (the air was humid and the temperature was around 35°C).

James and Sally managed to play several games before lunch. They attracted quite a few pussled looks :)

After lunch we took a tour with a canal boat to rest and also enjoy the scenery.
Felix and Sally bought some dragon whiskers (sorry no picture) which is a famous local candy made from very thin and tightly twined strains of sugar. Quite nice!
Actually you can find these all over Asia it seems. It's made in the same way as stretched noodles, except that they also use some sort of flour to keep the sugar from sticking.