Private Full-Day Classic Shanghai Shore Excursion

We were picked up from the ship terminal on time and Aileen was ready to show us around - our driver was really fantastic driver but did not speak English well . Aileen her English was amazing. She had studied literature and her knowledge of China, culture and history was interesting and thorough. She was loads of fun with all the answers. The drive to the Water village was quite long but all the way we saw lots of interesting things that Aileen described for us. When we arrived at the village we crossed a bridge built in the 15th century. We went into one of the houses to walk through what would have been a very wealth persons home and gardens. When inside we saw farming equipment, Aileen described how her grandparents had farmed the land and she had helped with the rice stripping etc. While in the house we saw some beautiful hand made tapestries - saw the women doing the work. Just did not buy as we could not decide what we would do with it. We went through the markets which were hectic and a little touristy - if we had more time we did find some out of the main stream areas that were very appealing for shopping. We had lunch on a balcony looking over the river(canal) it had a feeling of Venice. We liked the food but may be did not chose as well as we could - Eel was not great and the small prawns were not easy for us as we did not want to eat the shells. We travelled back into Shanghai and went to the Kezhi gardens which were beautiful not dissimilar to those at the water village - but much bigger. The Chinese markets nearby were also fabulous but time was getting away form us. The Shanghai tower was most inspiring. We wanted to drive by the Bund. Really we could have spent hours looking at the architecture of these buildings alas time ran out . The lights coming back to the ship were most impressive. It had been a busy but lovely day. Thank you Aileen