.: [ HangZhou 杭州 ]:.

Description:
Where are the Shanghai people hurrying when the weekend arrives? To Hangzhou of course, two hours far from Shanghai by train. Paddy fields, beautiful houses like little castles, this town has known during the time how to keep the charming aspect of the traditional chinese culture mixed with technological improvements. Hangzhou is a city apart, with its famous West Lake (Xihu - 西湖) surrounded by green gardens with a low pollution rate where people can travel through renting bikes. The longjing tea (龙井茶) is growing there, this is also a well-known kind of good smelling green tea. We stayed there two days within the week because some Chinese people advised us to do so whereas during the weekend, Hangzhou is almost always overcrowded. I provide you the map here.

And that is what we have done, we went early on thursday morning from Shanghai by bus. As soon as we arrived, we directly searched for a youth hostel we had seen on www.hostelsworld.com (this site is amazing, I advise you to use it when you are travelling and you don't know where to rest) to lighten our backpacks and rent some bikes. What an awful feeling, it is been awhile that I didn't had a bike between my hands and in fact, during those two days we rented bikes for 5 RMB/hour (without deposit) and travelled along Hangzhou. Although I admit that the weather was really hot and the bikes not really mountain bikes (take a look a the pictures and you will see), we rode a long distance through and outside of the town. At the end we also enjoyed a little rest on the lake (this time in a little boat). Then back to Shanghai at least!

I really enjoyed this little trip because we made some sports and at the same time, enjoyed the beautiful and traditional buildings. I really recommend to go there! You can also have a look at Maxime's pictures on his site!