Hangzhou bridge

God Damn You Ryan

The Blog of Ryan MacInnes. Web developer and cool dude.

January 19th, 2014

Hangzhou

Hangzhou is by far my favorite city I've visited thus far. It's super pretty and peaceful.

I arrived pretty late at night and at first I decided that I would attempt to walk to my hostel, but it turns out that I was zoomed out much too far on my iPhone and it was like a 7 mile hike. I made it about 4 miles before my legs started to fail me (Remember it had only been like 5 hours since I almost died climbing a mountain). So I caught a bus.

My hostel was incredible. It was run by the YMCA but it was in a gorgeous building on a beautiful side street right off the main drag. It was also my cheapest digs so far at $7 a night. My bed was huge and comfy and my room was quiet and the wifi was pretty fast (by Chinese standards anyways).

The next day I had a hilariously tame day compared to the day before it. I slept 11 hours (!!) then had a lazy morning where I drank some coffee and ate a bun, then I took the best shower I've had since I left the US. Seriously I was in there for like an hour.

Hangzhou has a big lake smack in the middle of town and I spent all afternoon walking around it, which took a lot longer than I expected, but seeing as I had nothing else to do it doesn't matter at all. It was extremely pretty and serene.

For dinner I went to a restaurant that Casey Caplowe recommended I check out (actually going to Huangshan and Hangzhou were both Casey's recommendations and they were both awesome) "The Grandmas". I had to wait for like 45 minutes but it was totally worth it because it was SUPER DELICIOUS. I ate tea roasted chicken and some sesame tofu and some mango-pear juice. And it was like 8 dollars.

Tomorrow I have to wake up at the lovely hour of 6:30am to catch the high speed train to Beijing. I don't think I'm going to do much of anything once I get there as MY LEGS ARE SUPER TIRED as you might imagine. They've walked like 30+ miles in the last 3 days.

If I were to come back to China my first stop would be Hangzhou. I only got to spend basically one full day there, but I enjoyed it immensely.