Following on from Lucy's arrival and our first night in Shanghai, here is a brief summary of what happened when we went to Hangzhou (in neighbouring Zhejiang Province).
* Day two was spent getting to Hangzhou. Maybe we should have gone to Shanghai South Railway station (I thought there were more trains from Shanghai Railway station though) or got the bus, who knows, we ended up at Shanghai railway with 4 hours before the next train to Hangzhou (this around 1130 as well!) and all our bags so half our afternoon was spent in the waiting lounge just chatting, fidgeting, reading, taking photos and playing games ... great, come to China, sit in a waiting room. But she didn't seem to mind :) Arriving in Hangzhou we finally found the taxi queue and it was long. Not as long as it took to get to our hostel though - the driver missed the destination and we found ourselves walking up a road with no real idea where the place was; luckily we were only a few minutes off target.
* The hostel in Hangzhou was lovely - we had a great room with a four-poster-bed, a showerhead which looked like the sun was raining on us, and A/C that really worked! Cheaper, and better than the hotel. What more could we want? The hostel had a deal with a local restaurant and we got 10% off our meal, so of course we went there the next night as well (though for some reason on that occasion one of the staff felt the need to come over to our table and attempt to talk with us. Actually not with us. Just with Lucy, his first words in English being, "Are you very beautiful?") ... one thing that surprised me was all the restaurants shut at about 2200, which was a bit awkward if you wanted a late meal ... and there were no local shops either. Hmm.
* Our second day in Hangzhou took us to West Lake where we dallied for a long while on the causeway, stopping frequently to admire the views and just hang out together on benches. With your back turned few people notice you are foreign, and so we enjoyed some quiet time. Lunch was reasonable, and then we took a walk to Long Yin Temple (I think that's the name anyway) - should really have taken a taxi but I thought it was closer than it was. Ah well we got exercise at least! And the day was beautiful for walking. We had just enough time for a quick (45 minute) look around one section of the complex, a place I'd been to in 2006, and then they were closing the gates. A young couple gave us a lift back to the hostel for free (they said they were going to Shanghai anyway and the man's logic was that if he was in England I would do the same for him, which is true), which saved all that stupid haggling with rip-you-off-given-half-a-chance "taxi" drivers.
With bad weather approaching, we set out the next day for Anhui Province.
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