Wake up at 9.30, shoulders still hurt and I find it really hard to get up. I suppose I’m not used to waking up so early from waking up around at least midday in Shanghai! I get ready and find out that I had the taps the wrong way again yesterday for the shower! STUPID!!! I get a decent enough bike (yesterdays was a little too small) and ride out to get breakfast in town. I meet Andrena at the Ming Hostel in town.
We get her a bike from the hostel (more expensive then my bike!). My first impression is that she doesn’t look too ‘mobile’ on the bike! I ask her when was the last time she rode, it was only a few weeks ago in Xian, though that was on the city wall, not on busy streets! I’m glad we changed our plans, as originally we were going to go ride through the mountains!
First stop, Yellow Dragon Cave Park. We dismount and walk up to the pagoda. Looks pretty different to all the other pagodas I’ve seen. Andrena whips out her wide angle lens for her compact camera. It looks pretty cool actually, bit weird for a compact camera but pretty cool gadget! We then trek up the mountain which gives pretty cool views of Hangzhou and try and find the Sunrise Terrace. We finally find it after getting lost and then bump into Paopin Temple, one of the places I wanted to go see.
After two hours of trekking in the park, we leave and go for lunch. Go to a pretty posh looking place on the north bank of the lake and turns out to be pretty expensive! Y50 each, but it was pretty nice food, had West Lake Fish, a speciality of Hangzhou.
We then re-saddled and cycled across Baidi Causeway and went to the provincial museum. It was actually pretty good, and free! I’ve never been to a free museum in China before! Would have been better if I hadn’t just been to Shanghai Museum the week before and Nanjing Musesum the week before that… I don’t think I will be going to another museum for a while! We then get to General Yue Fei’s Mausoleum. He was a general in the Song Dynasty who successfully fended off several invaders, but then was betrayed by the court and executed (fucking Mandarins!).
We then rode down Sudi Causeway and then all the way around the lake to return to the hostel where we rented the bikes! The hostel looks a lot livelier then the one I’m in at the moment! We go to the Old Street to look around and go for some tea tasting! Dinner was good, ate fatty pork (aka heart attack in a pot)!
Knackered, return to my hostel and use free internet!!!
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