LazyFox blog

On the weekend just before Christmas I went to HangZhou which is one of the most popular places to visit for Shanghainese in the weekend and I can see why. HangZhou is, up till so far, the most relaxed place I’ve been in China; people stroll calmly across the streets and hawkers don’t shout at you and grab you. And to top it all of there is the famous West Lake (Xihu) with beautiful views and things to see all around it.

When I arrived on Saturday morning with the fast train (just 1 hour and 40 minutes), Jenny, an old school friend of Lily from Huatek, kindly picked me up. Jenny then showed me around the Ling Yin temple and the Peak flown from afar (a mountain believed to be flown over from India because of its typical shape) next to the temple. We also climbed one of the mountains around the West Lake to North Peak. Then we headed back to town to the famous HeFang street for a little shopping and some sweet HangZhou food (DongPo Rou).

On the way back to the hotel by myself I passed by Xihutiandi, which seemed like the West Lake version of Xintiandi in Shanghai, though I later found that is not the origin of the name at all. I also found I had booked my hotel smack dab in the middle of a lot of big clubs, but unfortunately I was feeling a bit week because of my everlasting cough and decided I should get some sleep instead.

After sleeping late on Sunday it was time for a walk around West Lake. The nice thing about walking around the lake is that there are many different types of beautiful sceneries. The willows at the south east, the pagoda at the south, the long causeway across the lake in the west, Gu hill and the causeway in the north and so on and so on.

At the end of the day I looked for a restaurant recommended by my Lonely Planet, only to find (after a long walk) that it had closed since then. That was actually the second restaurant mentioned in there that was closed, the first was near Lingyin temple when we were looking for a place to have lunch. So, unfortunately, running out of time I resorted to some Diko’s (Chinese KFC) and went back to the station.