Note: This entry was created after our arrival back in Ottawa due in part to our limited time and more importantly to a poorer choice of Internet Café in our neighborhood. More is said in our last travel posting about our periodic encounter with technology.

One of last tourist site we had planned to visit was Hangzhou. Victoria was eager to join us for the 2 hour train ride. This was yet another early morning wake-up to catch the 7am train. Our Lonely Planet travel guidebook states “For the Chinese, Hangzhou is the country’s most famous tourist attraction. The lake gives rise to what must be one of China’s oldest tourist blurbs: ‘In heaven there is paradise, on earth Suzhou and Hangzhou’”. From the train station, we took the local bus to the downtown area – east of the West Lake. We booked a reasonable hotel in a central location. We visited a few Internet Cafes – without spending much time there. We splurged for lunch by dropping by a Pizza Hut. We had KFC a few evening back with Jenny’s younger brother and nephew – a real big treat for them. In the afternoon, we walked a bit around West Lake. Strangely, I felt like a lot of Chinese were surprised to see a foreigner – some teenager girlss even asked Jenny’s permission to have my picture taken with them! Later we took a series of boat to visit some small islands. Jenny bought really fresh Longjing green tea leaves – it was still warm from its “roasting” process. At the end of the afternoon, we took a local bus to a very nice souvenir market area. We spent a few hours browsing for souvenirs. We noticed that it was not possible to bargain too hard over here. We took the taxi back to the hotel. We went for supper to a very popular Chinese fast food across from our hotel. The place was chaotic and operated in an unusual way. We had to buy “x” amount worth of tickets then line-up at different parts of the counter for different food items – somewhat like a cafeteria but with the cash register at the beginning of the line!

After a good night sleep, we were out again walking other causeways of West Lake. We (finally) got to rent some bicycles to enjoy even more the causeways. For one-hour, Victoria enjoyed riding behind me. She even wanted us to buy the bicycle! After our little bicycle excursion, we sat at peaceful terrace for some tea. Back at the hotel for a late check-out, we left again for the souvenir market for some more shopping. Again we enjoyed the layout of shops. After a good lunch in the area, we tracked down another Internet Café – the connection time was very slow – we ended giving up.

We boarded our train back to Shanghai at around 5:20pm. We were back at Jenny’s brother’s apartment by 9pm. Along the way, Victoria noticed two foreigner ladies close by speaking. She turned to me and says “Their Chinese sounds a lot like French” – She was right the ladies were speaking French (European).

We all enjoyed our time in Hangzhou. The city offers a sense of laid-back atmosphere. A place we will want to spend more time on our next visit!