Day 2 Hangzhou (sunday)

After having a slight lay in we were ready by 11am and wanted to explore the West lake and "according" to the lonely planet you can do this by bike. So we hired a bike from the hostel and headed to the lake only to keep finding walking paths only with big signs saying no bikes!! We carried on biking thinking we would eventually come across a cycle path but no such luck, so we had to risk our lives on the roads of china with no real view of the lake not an experience i wish to repeat. Eventually (3hrs later) we decided to take the bikes back and try plan B of walking round the lake which i am happy to say was much more successfull!! The west lake is huge it took us five hours to just walk round the centeral part, it has some amazing scenary and towards the end of our walk we got to see a fab sunset too. After all that biking and walking we decided to treat ourselves to a nice dinner then went back to the hostel to try and update the blog which was unsucessful (dodgy chinese computers). So obviously a few beers was needed instead!!

Day 3 Hangzhou (Monday)

Checked out of the hostel a midday today ready to go back to Shanghai, so we left our luggage at the hostel and decided to go and buy our train trickets and explore Hangzhou a bit more. After another 3 hour walk we eventually found the train station (we are going to be super fit by the time we get home we have never walked so much!!) and got our tickets very easily for 17.25hrs. So we thought we had a good couple of hours to play with! We had a leisurely stroll back to the hostel via a market that we didn't know about (wish we had known about it earlier!), quick coffee and then grabbed our bags thinking getting a taxi would be easy! Not so at that time. By that point it was about 16:45 and we started too walk thinking we'd be able to flag one down, this was not to be as nobody wanted to stop!! Dam them! So the leisurely stroll turned into a near on 45 minute run with bags and all! We arrived at the station very hot and sweaty and 5 minutes too late!! Arrgh!!!!!!!! Thankfully Leanne, who we had spent the day with and was also coming back with us to Shanghai knew all about changing tickets! And it was so easy, just take your ticket up to the window and no questions asked they changed them straight away for a train an hour later! No stress! (Its obviously a regular occurance! The chinese must miss trains alot!)

Once back in Shanghai and re-checked back into our old hostel (it very wierdly felt like coming home!) we headed out for some street food. After had a few beers and spent far too long up dating this thing before heading off too bed!!!