Advertisement
Published: October 31st 2009
Edit Blog Post
The bus ride from Suzhou to
Hangzhou went faster than I thought. At arrival, it took a while before I found the right bus stop to the hostel, but when I finally found it, the ride went very well. And then, I have to say, taking the bus is more fun than to get into a taxi that brings you to your destination at once.
After having checked in the hostel, I decided to do completely nothing that day. The hostel is located at the West Lake, the primary sight in Hangzhou. I just walked around until I found a nice place to sit and where they had wifi (it turned out to be a Starbucks). When the evening fell, I went to the
night market on Qinghefang Old Street. It was too touristy for me to really like it, but at least I’ve seen it. I also took a look in a bronze museum, but that was also not really my taste.
Nearby the famous street, there were again many
people dancing on music on a big square. This time it were over one hundred people and the routines differed per song, which I hadn’t seen before.
The next morning I rented a bike to go around the famous
West Lake. What I do like about Hangzhou is that almost all of the museums and parks are free to enter, unlike Suzhou. The first stop I made was at a piece of park where there were so many tourist groups that I really soon was tired of it. I guess I got spoiled to travel without any other tourist. I decided to leave the lake for what is was and headed for the Chinese Tea Museum.
Near the museum there are many
tea fields, which looked beautiful. It wasn’t really clear what the right way was to the museum, so I took a path leading up the mountain. But when I found out, I didn’t take the turn but headed up the mountain. It was really funny, because normally when you take a path, you know where you’re going or you have some kind of goal. This time I had no clue where the path was going, where it was ending, or whatsoever. It was a paved path with many steps going up and up and up and down for a while before going up and
up and up again. There were a few times when I doubted whether I should continue upwards. Luckily I persisted, because the view I finally got was amazing. The mountains and the West Lake together looked really nice and I was all alone. The only negative thing about climbing is that I always get a headache afterwards and this time was no exception.
At the top of the the mountain the road continued down, but I went the same road back because I didn’t have a clue where I was and where the path was leading etc. Later that day, I found out that it was indeed the right choice, because I saw a map of the region. It would have been a far end with a few crossings on the road.
At the base of the mountain, I had some lunch and finally visited the Tea Museum. It was more interesting than I thought. It explained the history and evolution of the tea ceremonies.
For the rest of the day I biked around the lake and stopped at a few places walking around. In the afternoon I didn’t see the tour groups anymore. I’ve seen the
Hangzhou Botanic Garden and cycled the
Baidi Causeway. It was lovely to bike around in the relaxing atmosphere. In the end of the day I finished my tour around the lake and I even cycled through the city at night without lights on the bike of course.
The next morning I enjoyed the sun which was shining bright again and the fact that I don’t have to do anything because it is still my holiday! It is the best day I’ve had since I left Harbin (not the temperature of course), because this day the sun was really shining instead of pushing itself through the cloud deck. It really felt like summer holiday again! In the beginning of the afternoon, I headed to the airport of Hangzhou by public transportation to transfer for my next destination. The ride took much longer than expected because traffic was completely jammed. However, I made it on time at the airport!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.122s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 7; qc: 46; dbt: 0.0434s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb