Mandalay has a lot to offer the tourist flow. Pagodas, a really cool Royal Palace and very fun shopping experience.
We heard that Mandalay Hill is well worth a visit, although we sadly didn’t make it there. The heat was getting the better of us midday, (over 40 c) and we had a really great rooftop pool. 
We have seen a lot of Pagodas now, and we agreed the coolest new Pagoda we have seen was Swedagon Pagoda in Yangon, ( built on an a really old Pagoda site, but still newish). But there is a lot of nice Pagodas in Mandalay as well. The old Pagodas of Bagan were awsome in a different way.
This is the last royal palace of the last Burmese Monarchy. The palace was constructed, between 1857 and 1859 when King Mindon founded the new royal capital city of Mandalay. The plan of Mandalay Palace largely follows the traditional Burmese palace design, inside a walled fort surrounded by a really cool moat. The palace itself is at the centre of the citadel and faces east. All buildings of the palace are of one storey in height. The number of spires above a building indicated the importance of the area below.
The moat is impressivly huge. 
Once you crossed the moat( you can only entre from one side, we learned the hard way). There is a miltary guarded gate ehere we paid a entremce fee of 10000 kyat pr person and one of us had to leave an identifcation. 
The cat may be sleeping, but I’m sure it was a guard cat. It was there when we left as well. 
We had to walk for 15 minutes before we got to the palace, but it was impressive. 
The Watchtower
The grounds were well kept, but the palace itself could do with some inside cleaning. 
It was really cool, like you could step into history and roam around. 
There is a lot of different things to buy, and its very cheap, so our biggest problem was not to buy more than we could take home. 