Hangzhou

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When I read that Hangzhou was comparable to heaven on earth, I knew that we had to make a stop there on our way to Huangshan.

As I have never been to heaven (that I know of), I think that this would be pretty acceptable. The lake, the trees, the old people dancing in the squares.... Looks pretty good to me! So relaxing around the lake and parkways... unless you step on the grass. Do not step on the grass. That guy will blow his whistle at you until you get off. And then just a couple streets a way, a super busy shiny city.

We took the high speed train from Shanghai's Hang Qiao station. This train station is huge and rivals any other train station that I have ever traveled through as the biggest, modern, and most well ran. The trains themselves, not so much but still get the job done. Departing this beast of a train station, we looked forward to what we would arrive to in Hangzhou. We hopped onto the platform and went down into a exit tunnel where at least 500 of the 1000 people all around us lit up their smokes in the airless concrete tunnel immediately, we headed straight for the ticket office hoping to secure return tickets for Saturday but unfortunately the guy at the window informed us that we would not be able to reserve more than 3 days in advance. So we will be chancing it for our same day return tickets when we arrive back from Tunxi to get back to Shanghai. We took the metro to the closest station to our hotel and emerged to a bustling city street, guiding ourselves with a compass (that's right - take google maps away from us and we will resort to a compass.... and maybe even apple maps if we get really desperate!) we found our way to our hotel right off of the West Lake. Stellar location.

We dropped our bags and headed to the lake for a walk. The weather app on my phone read +15 C and hazy, and hazy it was. When we arrived at the lake, we could barely see a thing! We kept walking around and found a bunch of chairs all chained in a row with a few people sitting in them so we grabbed two front row and center seats and waited to see what would happen. After about 10 minutes of sitting around and nothing happening we decided to carry on with our walk. The haze departed as the sun went down and we got some really nice night shots. Looking back at the section where we had sat down before, still nothing happening, we were glad that we had left. We went into the busy city to grab some noodles for dinner. We are trying out some of our mandarin skills here and there but it usually doesn't go as planned, we have decided to just mix Cantonese, English, and Mandarin together to see what happens - results pending. On our way back to the hotel, we stopped at a McDonalds window for a couple of Taro pies.... "Liang ge" - point to pies on menu on counter, the lady "liang ge... + many words we don't understand", us - look at each other as if one of us is going to suddenly translate, dammit what's the Chinese word for Taro.... We make our next move - "we don't want apple" (in Chinese), she giggles and nods in understanding and points to inside and then runs away to go grab them. Sure enough, the Chinese word for Taro is Taro. Hehe.

Walking back to our hotel we notice a huge water light show happening by the lake... at the chairs that we once claimed a front row seat 2 hours earlier.... as we walked towards the packed square, the last big shot of water collapsed down and a voice came over the loud speaker in Chinese and then English, "the show is now over". Of course!

The next day, we had big walking plans - walk around the whole lake and to six harmonies pagoda. We started off with a big dim sum lunch and went back to the lake. The scenery was beautiful. I was getting a lot of stares from the older generation which was actually surprising to me coming from Shanghai where there were a ton of foreigners, we actually didn't see a single other foreigner around the lake the whole day.... We stopped to visit the Temple of King Qian and Leifeng Pagoda along the way, we even had the entire Temple of King Qian to ourselves! We walked as far as the Leifeng Pagoda before we made a realization that we were not going to walk to six harmonies or finish our path around the lake. We turned back and started for Hefang Jie to check out the ancient town. Ancient town was a lot of fun, it was packed full of cheesy tourist stuff but we walked around for quite a while taking pictures and eating fun food. Binnson ordered a deep fried squid on a stick that made me squirm, bleh!

Next stop, Tunxi.

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Comments

[Dancing Dave]

Heading to Huangshan
A tip that may help if you have not hit Huangshan yet. You can get a 3 day pass for the same price as the single entry fee to the mountain, if you have your passport. Do not pay until you have found the person who will stamp your ticket. Otherwise you have to pay the entry fee each time you visit the park. They do not advertise this so come prepared. Enjoy.

[Binns and Cheryl]

Thanks Dave! I actually read your huangshan blog during my research. We will be ready!

[D MJ Binkley]

Heaven on earth
No one should miss a place that is advertised as heaven on earth. I would love to see everyone dancing in the square. That would be marvelous. Love the photo of west lake. Eager to hear about Tunxi.

[Binns and Cheryl]

Thanks! It really was a beautiful place, we wish could have stayed longer. Next time ;-)