Weekend in Hangzhou!

Hey guys, I’M BACK! From Hangzhou which is where we traveled to over the weekend, and it was soooo fun! The weather is finally starting to be form of nice and so exploring the West Lake and the other sites was actually quite pleasant =). We headed out on Friday morning, checked into our hotel and explored the area to find some grub. We managed to find a delicious restaurant that provided suggestions for all the yummy Hangzhou specialties and it ended up being one of the best meals I’ve had so far. We then proceeded to Dairy Queen and got blizzards since it was sooo hot! And people who know of these blizzards that Dairy Queen sells are aware of the whole serving it upside down thing…good story to go with that but I’ll put it in a picture post later =D. Anyway, after our DQ adventure, we headed out to West Lake, the most famous part of Hangzhou. We found a boat tour and traveled to various islands on the lake. It’s GORGEOUS and I have plenty of pictures to share with that =).

The next day we started out slow with a small lunch and then we headed towards Lingyin Si to take the cable car up/ gondola up to North Peak. Our gondola car DIDN’T HAVE A FUNCTIONING FAN and therefore it we were baking alive for about 10 minutes. So awful… There were fields upon fields of tea, which is the other thing Hangzhou is famous for and so there was a view of that and a small temple at the top which I visited. Afterwards we headed toward the tea museum (meh) and then to this tea…um…amusement park? That sort of fed us and let us have some tea. It was alright… For dinner we somehow decided to go to Hooters, which is the most expensive meal I’ve had in China so far. It was alright though =P. But the tea house that we went to afterwards would’ve sufficed for a complete meal. We also played some intense games of mafia which was uber fun, as it always is =D.

Sunday morning we headed out for a bike ride on the Su Causeway which was super cool and super pretty! Then we had lunch at the most famous restaurant in Hangzhou (and supposedly the oldest restaurant in China) Louwailou. It was pretty good food, quite pricy, but not as good as our first lunch =P. Our group sort of split up after that and I went with a few others to Yue Fei’s mausoleum and saw the sights there. Then it was abouts time to head home… Unfortunately the train back was yet ANOTHER hard seater which I had never wanted to experience it again but this time it wasn’t as bad, thank goodness. But still…always soft seats, from now on!

Anyway, back in Shanghai, sort of going to class, etc. I feel like I should do some actual school work at some point… And in other news, my little bro has decided to go to Berkeley…YIKES and YAY! At the same time! Crap, I need to figure out my telebears!

Alright...I still have to post my pics from Nanjing/Suzhou which will come before the pics from Hangzhou so those will be up soon-ish, probably? I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before but could someone comment so that I can test something because China censors my blog and that makes me sad =(.

Miss you guys! =)