Other Hangzhou adventures

Architecture on the lake, but what's that round the corner!?

Forget Where's Wally...Where's Hagen Daazs?

 So here are just a few more snap from my travels around Hangzhou. Not the last post from Hangzhou though as I still need to tell you all about LingYin Temple! But first here's a look at some more pretty things:

As I was walking along the river I saw a beautiful looking building, which I could only assume was of some importance as it could only be reached by passing a huge stone tablet on a stone walkway. I walked the stone slabs to get to the building only to find that, while it was indeed stunning, it also had a dirty little secret. Just round the corner from the grand entrance a western ice cream shop peeked out from behind the shutters. On the plus side, at least it wasn't immediately visible, unlike in some places where lacquered wood panels are bedecked with shiny plastic signs proclaiming the wares of Starbucks and the like - it can be kind of a mood killer...

Keep your chin up, leafy!

From there I kept a-wandering around the lake and saw these amazing trees swan diving into the water, or at least giving it a damn good go. They were held up by what looked at first like large roots growing from the middle of the trunk but turned out to be concrete posts carved to look like part of the tree. If Dali made trees...

I carried on round the lake and watched the reflection of the sun setting over the mountains, as you do, before heading to a little restaurant to find something to eat. I ordered some beef and rice and was soon tucking into some spicy tofu - not even a little bit what I had ordered but hey. It was vigorously unpleasant so I paid my bill and headed, head bowed in shame, to the safe neon glow of KFC. In my defense I was tired, as I'd walked all over the place and...shut up!
I decided it was time to catch a taxi back to meet Sydney, which turned out to be much easier said than done. What seemed like hundreds of taxis streamed past me with their little red lights shining, meaning they were not taking me anywhere.

I finally managed to get one of them to stop for me but when I showed the driver the address on my phone he started saying things that, even though I didn't really understand them, were clearly going in the direction of 'No'. I asked him why not and he said something along the lines of 'mei you dian' which I understood to mean 'There's no time'. I didn't really understand and so, seeing as my phone's battery was about to die and it held the only record of where the hell I was trying to get to, I begged my balls off!
On the way home we randomly drove into an underground car park and stopped next to some huge green shelves that said national grid on them. On the plus side, I didn't get chopped into little pieces and fed to koi carp - it turned out the 'dian' he was talking about electricity, not time. Yup, they're the same word...oh China!