Day 28 Shanghai, People's Republic of China (Part 1 of 2)

We left early in the morning to catch the bullet train to Hangzhou…  Pretty exciting day for most since it as their first Bullet Train ride.  We reached speeds of 296 km.  The train station was enormous, people everywhere… We arrived in Hangzhou right on time and were picked up by a driver who turned out to be the worst driver ever….  More about that later!  Anyway, According to a Chinese proverb: "In heaven there is paradise. On earth there are Suzhou and Hangzhou."  Yesterday we visited Suzhou and today we are visiting Hangzhou….  That’s a lot of Paradise in 2 days…. The first stop was the peak flying from afar, a series of Buddhist carvings in the rocks followed by Lingyin Si, a temple founded in 326 AD. At one time there were over 3,000 monks worshipping in more than 70 halls. It is still one of China's largest temples.  We walked through all the temples that kept appearing behind the one you were at, up the hill.  It was quite a climb but well worth it.  Our last  last stop of the day was a visit to West Lake, considered one of the scenic wonders of China. Once there we took a boat ride over to Xiaoying Island, getting a glimpse of the three reflecting pagodas that are on the  Chinese Yuan $1 bill. Spent time walking around the island taking in the magnificent scenery. When it was time to head back, we boarded a boat and met some wonderful Tibetan monks, who even though we did not speak a common language, enjoyed taking pictures of each other and trading emails. Was surprised when reviewing my photos, that these were the same three monks I had photographed earlier in the day at Lingyin Si.

The real adventure began when we arrived back at the van and our driver was missing. He finally made an appearance and proceeded to "race" to the train station for our return trip to Shanghai. We missed our scheduled train and had to go to another train station to get a train back to Shanghai leaving three and a half hours later.  I was not a happy camper….  That is a big part of the reason the blog is late.

Our guide, Lorraine, was wonderful as well as our Shanghai driver.  The driver in Hangzhou, Mr. Hu, was not worthy of the job…..  It still turned out to be a wonderful day but very tiring…..