Today’s bus ride was over 2 hours but we finally arrive around 9:30am. We visit the West Lake area and the Su Causeway.

There were tons of other tourists like us as well, they came toward us like a swarm.

There were peacocks just randomly grazing and sitting around:

We took a little tour on the lake.

They next took us to a green tea museum and grower. They offered us some of their mid-grade tea where you can eat the leaves and gave us some information about tea (which I unfortunately could not understand much).

We stopped by the Lingyin Temple (Flying Peak) and took this interesting picture:

Does it look like the Chinese word for “heart”? Our heads are supposed to be the 2 dots on top.

The famous laughing Buddha:

We then stopped by another silk factory, this one was The Center for Hangzhou Silk Showing & Shopping. We learned here that the double pupas are used for the inside of blankets because the threads are intertwined and can’t be unraveled. The single pupas are used to make the thread because it can be unraveled by machine.

The left are “double” and the right are “single”.

The place also did a fashion show for the customers to see their clothes. It was rather corny but they do make nice things.

We headed back to Shanghai and Ron and I had a craving for hot pot. We found ths place called “789”. Each person has their own pot with their own soup and you order shared additives. The best thing about this place was the choice of sauces that you make yourself… it was a bit overwhelming and we had a hard time choosing.

The only shady thing about this restaurant was that we tried to use a credit card to pay and they told us it was rejected so we ended up paying cash instead. When we got back to the apartment, we called our credit card company to find out what was wrong and they said there wasn’t anyhthing wrong because the restaurant requested authorization three times and received authorization each time but the restaurant chose not to actually post the charges! Sounded very shady to me… they probably just wanted the cash instead so they could likely not report it… the food was pretty good and filling but I don’t know if I’d recommend the place if they have business practices like that.

For more photos on the silk factory and on the dishes we had for hot pot, check out the slideshow!

Tomorrow we leave for Macau!