Day 10

Today was our Hangzhou day. In the morning, we got on a train--after a brief breakfast in the Westin--and travelled to Hangzhou. It took about an hour--not so bad. 

Once we got to Hangzhou, we met our guide, a woman named Lulu. She took us to two different places. The first was West Lake: it was a beautiful, peaceful place, and we even got to ride on a boat there. It was a bit crowded, and I didn't like all the cigarette smoke, but there were a lot of picturesque scenes. Water, flowers, foliage  galore. 

However, I told Lulu that we were getting behind schedule after we spent about three hours at West Lake. Initially she planned for us to have a lunch of Chinese food, but Kerry and I opted for KFC at the Lingyin Temple, our next destination. My favorite part of this temple is the Felai Feng (Flying Peak), a Buddhist grotto site. I like the happy Buddhas the best, perhaps because spiritually I fancy myself as one. :)  We then went into the actual temple: saw some amazing statues, including a huge Buddha. These impressive statues also included the Hall of the Five Hundred Arhats, rows upon rows of golden statues. Apparently, Lulu said, it was the Buddha's birthday tomorrow, so a celebration was being prepared with flowers and food. Another interesting thing I saw was people walking around a bell and rubbing it with some sort of paper; I asked Lulu was this was about, and she didn't know. But it is interesting to see other cultural ceremonies people take part it. I was picked up some incense sticks and unfortunately burned myself on them slightly after trying to dispose of them. I think a spark flew up and hit me. Oh, by the way, I also burned the wrong end of the incense sticks at first. I'm such a disaster sometimes.

By the time all this was done, unfortunately, we had absolutely no time to go to the Tea Museum or Tea Plantation. Our driver drove by it, but that was all. We were taken to the hotel at 5:00 pm or so; we had to meet our friend Alex English for dinner at 5:30. We managed to take a Didi to the Blue Frog at 5:30. It was great to see Alex; he had a lot of questions about the USA. I hope he didn't get the impression that it's a complete disaster right now. (Well, a lot of it is, but that's beside the point.) He also brought along his wife Helen and his son Kieran, who is so grown up now at age five! When I last saw him he had just started walking. I had a really good salad with pumpkin, quinoa, and avocado as well as a four-cheese burger. Kerry had a double burger with bacon; it was called the "Mile High" burger. After eating with Alex and his family for about two hours, we took another Didi back to the hotel.

We liked the hotel room--especially the HUGE bed, which was about the hugest bed I've ever seen. We weren't thrilled with the overhead shower spray at the Westin that didn't work, so it was nice to have one that did here. Overall, we enjoyed Hangzhou, but we do wish our guide had paced things out better.