Today we got up and I began to pack us up and get ready to leave for Hangzhou. We decided to leave after lunch to allow the boys to sleep in the car. Unfortunately, Josh decided that he did not want to do this. Instead he looked out the window and played. I just prayed he would not be a handful for us later or that night in getting him to sleep.
The architechture in Hangzhou is very different from what we have seen yet. The buildings are the same, but not the homes. They seem to have an eastern European feel or Greek Orthodox look mixed with the traditional Chinese. Hangzhou is approximately 2 hours South/Southwest from Shanghai. It is further out into the countryside, but still a large city with about 3 million residents (small town by Chinese standards).
We arrived at the hotel and checked in. They had a wonderful booklet on the area in English with a great map. We decided on going down to the lake front and walking down one of the main streets that bordered the lake. We arrived just in time to watch a famous fountain go off to different music. After watching the fountain, we continued down the scenic park area. We ran into two groups of Chinese people playing traditional musical instruments and singing. After listening for a while, we continued on and stumbled into a Xihutaindi area. This area was not very crowded and just beautiful. It also contained a lot of shops. A famous architecht/designer has made these Xihutaindi or Xitaindi areas famous in China. His desire is to revitalize or recreate (sometimes these older areas are too hard to save or they have already been destroyed) an older area to contain new shops to attract the upscale clientele. We were able to find a nice Italian restaurant and we ate there for dinner. After dinner we got a cab and headed back to the hotel for dinner.
It was just fantastic to feel like we got away to a scenic area, with less congestion and noise.
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