Hangzhou

We planned on getting in Hangzhou around 7pm, have dinner and go out to explore the city. But of course things don’t always happen as scheduled. We arrived around 9pm because the train was delayed and our taxi driver dropped us at the bottom of a hill, pointing to a narrow street and probably saying that our hostel was that way.

After a 15 minute walk to the top of the hill and multiple trials of asking the locals, we arrived to a hostel that had some sort of outdoors restaurant. No one spoke English and our Chinese was limited so we had a pretty hard time explaining what we wanted. One of the guys was kind enough to call the hostel (we had the address and phone) and ask them to come pick us up, so eventually we got to the right place – which was at the bottom of the hill, right on the other side of the road.

After a quick shower, we decided we were still hungry and wanted to go for something to eat, but everything was closed at the time and we got out of our hostel just to discover that it was pouring and the streets were completely flooded. I had never seen anything like that before – the water was up to my ankles and my jeans were wet to the knee. My mom had told me that it usually rains a lot in Hangzhou, but I never thought it would be that bad – it was the rainy season. Soaked, we resigned to getting in a taxi and writing down: KFC.

We spent the morning of the next day discovering the city. Hangzhou is located on the lower part of the Qiantang River and is very famous for its beautiful scenery around the West Lake. For hours we walked around the lake, took pictures and watched people walking by. Apparently, the city is a very popular honeymoon destination for Chinese couples, and indeed we saw many walking hand in hand and wearing matching T-shirt, which is very common in China.





You could take a boat tour around the lake in the big boat or in smaller ones.







The view of the lake from the top of one of the hills around the lake.





The scenery is indeed amazing, but it can get really crowded around the lake, it’s really hot, and you never know when it starts raining. Just as we were walking out of the lake area, it started pouring. Really hard. In 10 minutes we were soaked and my umbrella was pretty useless. The worst part though was trying to get a taxi – no one wanted to take us back to our hostel and we never understood why. We showed them the address and they said something back and then left. We tried walking to the next corner, but it was just clearer that we would get no taxi. By the time we figured that out, we also figured out we were lost in an area with no other people or buildings to go inside. So we kept walking, for an hour and a half, soaked, but keeping our calm and trying to make fun of our miserable situation. At some point we passed something that looked like a tea plantation… luckily though, we eventually found a taxi and got back to our hostel.

We did not feel adventurous enough to go for dinner in town, so we had Jake order something for us over the phone. I admit, we were pretty spoiled. At night, we did go downtown and walked around for a bit, got some Black Dragon Tea and spent hours talking in a coffee shop.

Overall, Hangzhou was a very beautiful city, with amazing scenery, but for us, the rain was such a pain…