After finishing our cruise on the Yangtze, we took a plane from Wuhan to Hangzhou. Marco Polo raved about Hangzhou, and we can now understand why. The beauty of the area lies around a large lake, called West Lake, which is in the heart of Hangzhou. It is about 3 square miles and is surrounded by gentle green hills with hiking trails, willow lined pedestrian causeways, beautiful gardens and landscaping, lots of lotus blossoms, and an island with reflecting pools.
Above is Dan giving pointers to some famous Chinese poet he met while visiting West Lake. This fellow is having a hard time coming to terms with Dan’s iambic pentameters (aka dribble).
Below are some beautiful shots of the gardens and lake.
I was very relieved to learn that wine making has a long tradition in China after coming upon this exhibit at West Lake. Unfortunately, after tasting their wine, I now knows why they don’t export it!
While our pictures look like we are almost the only people there, don’t be fooled as we had plenty of company. We did find a secluded spot up on a hill to quench our thirst.
We walked on day one of our visit until our feet almost fell off. It reality it was probably only about 6 miles or so, but the heat and humidity took its toll. We made it about 2/3rds around the lake and then couldn’t find a taxi to take us back to our hotel. We finally we able to take a tourist tram to our starting point and then walked back to our hotel from there. Boy, were our dogs tired! By the time we got back to the hotel, we couldn’t bear the thought of going outside to look for a place to eat, so we ordered in….and see what we got! Pizza is as bit of a luxury here and these two medium pizzas cost us about $30 USD. It was worth it, nonetheless…especially if you like corn on your pizza.
On day two of our visit to West Lake, we were a lot smarter and spared our shoe leather. Once the wind died down, we took a boat ride across the lake to Xiaoying Island. The island consists of four reflecting pools within the island, pavilions and bridges. It was a nice way to end our visit to Hangzhou as we left by train that evening for Shanghai.
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