Crab Eating in Suzhou

On my next leg of the trip, we stopped in Suzhou to visit a five hundred year old home built in the Ming Dynasty by one of the designers of the Forbidden City.

The home was beautifully preserved with the original furnishings and a well manicured garden. 

Serene

The museum was very interactive and you got to walk around as if you were the owner of the home. 

Oh, hello there :D!

Nice place for photos too :D

Crabs from Tai Lake

Tai Lake is one of the largest fresh water lakes in China. The crabs from this lake are world famous for their taste and meat texture and are highly desired each year during the fall and winter when they taste the best. My mom told me that my great-grandmother tried the steamed crab from the lake once and remembered the taste for the rest of her life. So of course I had to try one while I'm in the area to see what all the fuss is about :D. 

They come bound like this after being steamed. Steaming is the preferred method of cooking since it retains the original crab flavours the best.

Looks like a normal crab, but the legs are smaller

There is a big difference between the male and female crabs and I typically prefer the taste of the female crabs. This is how you tell which is which. 

Male crab example:

Narrow flap at the back means it's a male

Female crab example:

See how the flap here is nice and broad? It's a female

This is the inside of the male crab once you lift the outer shell.

For this type of crab, I actually prefered eating the male crab. As for the taste and was it as good as my great-grandmother suggested? Meh, it was OK. I prefer the ones we eat at home in Canada. 

Thanks for reading everyone! Stay tuned for my adventures in Beijing!

Green Tea and Paying Respect in Nanjing

For this part of the trip, we got to visit a tea farm in Hanzhou before we left for Nanjing, where the best Dragon Well green tea in China is produced. It was a really quaint little place and we got to sample some of the tea.

Beautiful example of an old Chinese farm

The area maintained a lot of the olden structures and decorations, red lanterns can be seen everywhere.

The leaves of the tea were edible and had a nice crunchy texture to them.

It was strange eating dried eating tea leaves, but the taste was OK

Afterwards, we drove for four hours to the ancient capital of Nanjing where we visited the tomb of Dr. Sun-Yat Sen. Dr. Sun Yat-Sen was the founding father of the Republic of China. He was the first president in China and helped overthrow the Qing Dynasty.  Even though there were lots of people there that day, the experience was still intimate and interesting.

If you notice from the photo above, it's quite rare to see a Chinese styled building to have a blue tiled roof. The designer of the memorial area wanted to use the colours of the flag of the Chinese Democratic Party that Dr. Sun founded.

Overall, the memorial was beautiful and I'm really happy the Chinese government decided to keep the place despite their political differences.

Thanks for reading everyone!

Hungry in Shanghai

Hey guys! I'm going to start a multi-part series documenting my recent two week trip in China. The trip starts with a seven day tour of Shanghai and the surrounding cities, then four days in Beijing, and another three in Hong Kong.  Let me start by telling you about my adventures in Shanghai and the beautiful West Lake in the Hangzhou city nearby.

I didn’t really get a chance to explore Shanghai since we were  on a tour but here was my brief glimpse into the city. It’s huge, busy, vibrant and exciting. 

Very futuristic looking skyline with the Oriental Pearl

 It really is an interesting city of old mixed with the new and much of the structures give off a futuristic feeling to the city. It was very common to see the locals practising tai chi and other exercises on the streets.

I got to try the local special xiaolongbao, a savory bread with meat and broth inside.

Janet gives her stamp of approval!

Yum!

 Even though we were here for a short time, I still had a really good time. I guess this just means that we'll have to come back again :).

West Lake

The next day we went to Hanzhou where to visit the beautiful West Lake where many famous Chinese poems has been composed about. The Chinese has been trying to preserve the environment around it and it was a nice and quiet retreat away from the normal hustle and bustle of the city.

Hard to find a place with no sky rises in sight

We got there right around sunset and it was a really nice view.

My next stop will be in Nanjing, stay tuned :D

Snowy December Visit to the Distillery District

Hey Guys! It's been a while since I've updated and since I have a bit of time on my hands this week, I figured I'd do an update on recent events. :)

So this week, I got to hang out with my coworker from Yellowknife after work at the Distillery District. I couldn't think of where to go in Toronto but I figured the Distillery District would be a fun place to go and something that's unique to Toronto.  I first came to the Distillery District for my Urban Geography assignment in 4th year. The Gooderham & Worts Distillery started in the 1800's and at one point produced much of Toronto and North America's liquors. You can still see a lot of the equipment used for distilling on display. By the 1990's however, the area was used for movie production and by the early 2000's, it was re-opened as an arts and entertainment destination in Toronto. 

It was a cold winter night after our first snowfall for the year so it was kind of nice to just walk around and check out the lights and snow. It's not a big area but there's permanent art installations throughout the district.

There's actually a Christmas market here every year before Christmas where you can get your artisanal goods and lots of people come to visit. Unfortunately, I came when the market was over but it was nice because it wasn't too crowded.

Nice view of the giant Christmas Tree

We wandered around checking out some of the stores in the area. Unfortunately, most of them don't seem to be open past 6.

 We finally found a little Italian restaurant near the front entrance called Archeo Trattoria. I decided to try their flat bread pizza and added hot Italian sausages to compensate for the lack of protein.

I couldn't resist taking one more shot of the area before we left since the lights were so pretty!

Extras

I've been going to a lot of parties this month with the holiday season and of course that means eating a lot of food. My favourite so far has been the quail dish I got at Habits Gastropub . The meat was tender, flavourful but not overcooked, just...amazing!This was my first time at a Gastropub and I will be sure to try more in the future!

I used to eat a lot of quail when I ate dimsum with my parents back in the day. These days, it's really hard to find them anymore so if you know a good quail place, please please please let me know.

Finally, I'll be starting a new travel series at the end of the this month when I'll be visiting China! This is my first time back in more then a decade and I'm really excited to discover my heritage! Look out for more entries in 2014 as I blog my way through my China trip.

 It's been an amazing year going on all my adventures, from going to Italy to Seattle and trying Stand-up Paddleboarding. I hope there's more adventures in store for 2014! Have a very merry Christmas everyone and a super happy new year!