1122016
First full day of Hangzhou, enjoyed our fancy hotel bed, and set off.
Laura did some research, identified a Pagoda on a hill, a restaurant, and temple to see. So we set off.
We walked around more of the lake in the day time.
and found our way to the pagoda ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baochu_Pagoda ). As we were approaching the approach to the pagoda, we realized we were hungry, so before climbing a mountain, we turned around and retraced our steps looking for restaurants.
Unfortunately our hunger led us astray once again. We chose a restaurant that looked ok at a cursory glance, but it turned out to be lackluster. We got a chicken dish, which was 30% bones (i didnt even realize chickens had that many bones), and a cabbage and pork dish, that had a flavor niether of us really liked. The best part of the meal was the 2CNY bowl of rice, and the drink. We got a jug o pawpaw milk, because we had no idea what it is. ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asimina_triloba ) turns out this fruit is actually native to North and South America. We thought we were eating something exotic…
Also this lunch was 150CNY, which is all the more disappointing.
Full of chicken bones and unpleasant pork, we set up the hill to pagoda.
the Pagoda itself was neat, and an engineering marvel, given that it is on top of a hill, but ultimately it was something to draw us to the mountaintop. the paths around the pagoda are literally carved out of the rocks which was really cool, we wandered around more, found a Taoist Temple.
and surrounding the temple is the rock sculptures we have seen elsewhere, but honestly the top-of-a-mountain thing made these more impressive.
We then made our way back down to the lake and began walking around to the temple and restaurant.
unfortunately the trek was furthur and i anticipated, and it didnt seem we were going to make it to the temple before it closes, so we decided on just dinner. The restaurant (link here) appears on the Apple maps, AND the tourist map we snagged from the hotel, so we are sure it existed.
we walked down the street it was allegedly on, and could not find it, so we turned back cut in one of the side roads, that seemingly took us ONTO the lake. This road wound around, and we say many men in hard hats coming the other way, we turned down one street, and a little old lady immediately waved us away. Clearly she knew there was nothing back there for westerners. We walked around, and found ourselves in the middle of a Tea field.
this was pretty cool, and all of the workers were as enthralled by us walking through there as we were to see the tea fields.
we walked around some more, seeing where all these workers were coming from (seemingly collecting the apples they get at the end of the day, maybe their wages too) and found the back end of the restaurant we were looking for.
Turns out, the cut in the foliage that would have brought us to the front of the restaurant was about 25m further down the road that we turned around on 30 minutes before.
The restaurant was really cool
we came in, the staff was very friendly, and showed us to a table, then as we sat down, another staff member got us up and walked us to the door. we thought we were getting kicked out for a second, but then realized we were supposed to point at the pictures on the wall to order, because they knew we werent going to navigate the menu sheet by ourselves.
We saw on the menu, under the pork we really wanted was 400 and some characters that we obviously couldnt read...holyshit we just walked into a fantastically expensive restaurant, or we are ordering half a pig…
perusing more of the menu, we saw some more agreeable numbers. we thought maybe the credit card can get us through (we got a good high limit on that fancy travel card), no luck, they dont take card…
i looked a little harder, and tried to google translate it, grams…
that is HOW much food we get not the price, the price is on the menu sheet. i ask to see the menu sheet, and see very acceptable prices.
so we go ahead and order the pork, a lamb shank, a green bean dish, a fruity drink and a flower tea.
everything was superb. The pork was great, had a nice crusty spiced skin, and plenty of fat. The beans were sauteed with garlic and ground pork and chili peppers. and the lamb was great, a huge leg of lamb
pictured above
had all kinds of spices and lamby flavor. The fruity drink was papaya and pomegranate, and the tea was chrysanthemum, and laura said it was nice, i think it tasted mostly like burnt water, but i guess i just lack a refined palette.
To finish the dinner we got an order of the peanut ice we had the other week, and this time it was even better than that, and it was pretty great the first time.
This whole dinner came out to 168CNY, so completely made up for the shitty lunch.
We hopped the bus right outside the restaurant back to the downtown area. Following the lake back home we stumbled onto a large crowd of people (even by Chinese standards a big crowd) gaggling around.
Turns out they were waiting for a watershow. The watershow was pretty neat.
Another point i forgot to make earlier, China, China gives no fucks, they have no railings around the lake, there were no railing up or down the mountain we climbed. Despite the gaggling, the lack of safety, and the general inability of the average Chinese citizen to queue properly, no one was pushed in the lake while watching the show.
we then made our way home, had a soak in the fancy tub, finished the last of the beer we got in Suzhou, and turned in for the night.
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