Quick trip in Qibao (七宝古镇)

Our initial plan was not to visit this place but when we arrived at the destination we chose, it was not to our expectation. Mummy was disappointed with the environment surrounding the park so we decided in last minute to visit this place instead since it was nearby the vicinity compared to other parks.

When we first arrived, our first impression was - is this the place? As we didn't see any ancient buildings, all the buildings were like local modern buildings and lot of hawkers doing their business on both sides of the small lane. Our driver went down and asked the local people for confirmation. Yup, this was the correct place but need to walk inside further then only can see beauty of the place. The local people said that we should park here as on the other side, there was no parking places. So we decided to start from other side and walked towards this car park to complete our journey.

Mummy asked daddy to take the photo of the map placed at the side of the road as this was the last minute decision, we didn't bring the Qibao map.

Before we entered the 古镇, we immediately taken the photo of the main entrance billboard as there would be no chance to do so after entering. Ethan was amazed by the water wheel.

Ethan and daddy took the photo in front of the stone sign

Before arriving at the 古镇, we need to walk across the road with both sides were the residence building for local people. Here mummy's impression was that it is just like the business street as lot of people was selling different things. Finally we need to cross the stone bridge and entered the 古镇. Well, the 古镇 was like those water village we have visited. Difference is that it is free.

Our cheeky boy always said that he wants to go to the toilet. Every time it was false alarm. Daddy had no choice at last and said to him that if he wanted to pee just pee inside the diaper. When we walked further inside the 古镇 we found out that actually there were a lot of people there. We purposely chose the weekday and hoped that less people would come here but actually there was no impact. Still lot of people as we can see that the tourist bus had taken the people to visit here. Weekday already so many people so we couldn't imagine what the weekend would be, surely more crowded.

We need to hold Ethan instead of letting him walk by himself and at the same time need to take care of our belongings. Crowded place normally will have pickpocket. Mummy didn't buy anything inside as she felt that those things can be found outside instead of here. Guessed this was a tourist place, those things should be marked up higher than same item sold outside.

Finally we arrived at the place where it was a bigger space, there was a small pond built with a zig-zag wooden bridge leading to the center rock formation. The pavilion was built on the top of the rock formation. This pavilion is for people to rest there and sight seeing the surrounding view from the top. We spent quite some time at this place as Ethan was attracted by the fishes in the pond and he liked to climb the rock formation.

Seeing the fishes swimming

Posting some posture at the zig-zag bridge

Climbing the rock formation and crossed the stone bridge on the small pond

Before leaving this place, Ethan spot the cartoon character located in the one corner. He requested us to take the photo of him with this icon. It is the China Expo 2010 icon. Initially he wanted to climb up and take the photo with it but the place was too high for him to climb up. So mummy asked him to stand in front of icon and took few photos of him. He was happily standing and willing to leave this place after taken the photo.

From those photo, can see that lot of people visited this 古镇

Mummy's feeling was this 七宝古镇 is just like the mixture of "周庄"and "豫园". Where it is a water village and the commercialize 古镇. Only the different was that 豫园 has more foreign visitors and "周庄" was bigger.