Hangzhou Holiday

After surviving the Chinese New Year festivities here at home, we took a short three-day trip to a nearby city, Hangzhou, famous for the beautiful West Lake.

This picture makes it look like a rural mountain location, but really it is a bustling city. The lake is surrounded by park and green areas, so that's where we planned to spend our time. I guess I wasn't planning on it being quite so cold. And we knew that there would be thousands of Chinese tourists there for the holiday, but I guess we hadn't quite prepared ourselves for the hordes of tour groups in the park.

Elbowing our way through the Bai Causeway, West Lake

Walking on the paths is hazardous, thanks to these green tourist buggies that drive very fast through the crowds.

On a bridge on the Bai Causeway

Boating on the lake

Tim and I went running in the park while we were there (on alternate mornings) and enjoyed some more peaceful time on the lake. But even at 7 in the morning we had to elbow through the crowds before we found the paths where there was nothing much of interest to the tour groups.

One of our goals was to eat some local specialties, so the first night we splurged and ate at the Hyatt, well-known for their Chinese restaurant specializing in local dishes. Unfortunately the local dishes we were hoping to try were sold out, so we tried some other delicious food. The next night we tried to get to a local chain restaurant that specializes in Hangzhou food, but we couldn't find a taxi and were freezing, so we had some good Indian food instead. Finally the third day we went to Grandma's Kitchen (外婆家) for lunch and had a fantastic meal.

The spread at Wài Pó Jiā

The elusive Dōng Pō Roù 東坡肉 melt-in-your-mouth slow braised pork in Shaoxing wine.

And no restaurant meal is complete these days without Milan's animals. Or, I should say, there is no peaceful meal without the animals. They live disasembled in my purse and can make an apearance to provide at least one hour of entertainment at restaurants.

Milan and his menagerie

We visited our first temple in China finally. The Jingci Temple 净慈寺 is a Buddhist temple near our hostel and was bustling with activity.

Incense offerings

This picture doesn't do this statue justice. He is massive, reaching the tall ceiling.

Another morning we took a bus up into the mountains to seek out some of the famous Dragon Well and the tea from this region. We ended up buying a jin of tea (500 g) from a lady after visiting her house and trying three different kinds of lóng jǐng tea that her family harvested.

Buying tea - Milan slept through the entire visit

And we visited the famous Dragon Well in the village where the tea gets its name.

The famous Dragon Well. Or so we thought.

Thanks to the miracle called the internet, we discovered when we got home yesterday that we had gotten off at the wrong stop and didn't actually make it to the Dragon Well Village. The tea we bought is still fantastic, and we had a great day, but now we have to go back and see the real Dragon Well another time.

Luckily, Hangzhou is only two and a half hours away.

More pictures on Flickr!