Shanghai in Retrospect (Part 2).

6 April 2008 (Day 3): Hangzhou

The last 15 times that I went to Hangzhou were all in 2005. I’ve visited Hangzhou in winter, summer and autumn, but never in spring. So I decided that I could do with a short getaway there. After all, the scenery in Hangzhou is so beautiful that you probably would never feel bored by it. Did I ever mention that if I have the money, I’ll buy a house right next to the West Lake?

I took a train from the Shanghai South train station – the station opened in 2006 and it was actually quite a beautiful station. I think it was designed like those European train stations, and apparently it’s the biggest train station in Asia right now. What impressed me wasn’t really the size or the cleaniness (well that actually took me by a bit of surprise – it’s one of the cleanest train stations in China that I’ve ever been to), but this:

The roof of the train station actually looks quite impressive if you ask me. Anyway, the train I took was the new high speed rail (CRH) and it was really comfortably. It kind of resembled the High Speed Rail in Taiwan, but because of the fact that it was quite new so it did not hit the maximum speed that it boasted of. But I guess to get to Hangzhou from Shanghai in 70 minutes is actually quite cool!

When I got to Hangzhou, the first thing I did was to buy the return ticket back to Shanghai – and I managed to get the last ticket for the high speed train that was scheduled to leave at 6.30pm. Lucky! Because of that, I had only about 5 hours to really walk around Hangzhou, which was fine since I pretty much knew the way and did not have to rely on a map. After all, it was the West Lake that I really want to visit, so that was alright for me.

And as always, the West Lake is ever so beaufitul.

The last couple of times that I visited the West Lake I was always walking inside the lake itself (as in the pavements built across the lake) but this time round I decided that I want to walk round the lake instead. I started at the Yue Fei Temple, and did a reverse route heading towards 斷橋殘雪. The walk took me about 2 hours, but it was highly enjoyable because of the scenery. The weather was a bit warm, which was a slight turnoff, but all in all it was still wonderful.

Then I thought that I had more time, so I continued walking around after buying the gifts for everyone back in office in downtown Hangzhou, and managed to catch this picture, which I thought was the nicest one out of the 100+ pictures I took around West Lake:

But as the setting sun suggested, I was getting a bit late and had to rush back to the train station. But neither a bus nor a cab was to be seen, and as I was panciking and contemplating about going back to Shanghai late, a disabled man who was riding a special scooter came to my rescue! He offered to ride me to the train station for RMB30, which was a bit expensive because I know even if I were to take a cab it would only cost me between RMB15 to RMB20. But seeing that I had to rush to the station, I took up the offer and boy, what a ride it was! It was actually very fun to be sitting inside that scooter and watching all the cars and bicycles next to me. And 10 minutes later I was already at the train station, with half an hour to spare before the train departs back to Shanghai.

Dinner was at some seemingly posh restaurant with a service attitude that did not warrant a mention. I slagged them off big time in dianping.com after that.