Hangzhou
Today is our first day of the tour!
Tour guide: Darren
Departure 8:20 hotel lobby
36 people in our group
We set off to the West Lake area.
There are 5 million people in the city of Hangzhou.
They have a policy in China where every second day you are aloud to drive for example, if your number plate ends in an odd number and even number you alternate days. This is to unclutter traffic.
Number plate colours mean different things:
Green=battery powered
Blue= below 10 seats
Orange=above 10 seats
White=police
We went to the West Lake area. The entire circumference of the lake is 5.6kms. It has stunning gardens and we saw a beautiful old pravillion.
Next we went to the Tea plantation-we tried some amazing green tea. It smelt like spinach/seaweed. We were told about all the health benefits of the tea.
We went for lunch which was a lazy Suzanne style, sharing lots of rice, meat, soup, egg and fish.
We came back to the hotel and had 2 hours to kill before we went to an optional show tonight. We went to the shopping plaza next to the hotel which was ginormous but completely empty because everyone does their shopping online in China!
We went to 7/11 to taste some treats.
We departed for the show at 4pm-'The Romance of Song Dynasty Show'.
It was like a giant theme park with lots of different shops and things to look at on the way to the theatre.
The actual show was INCREDIBLE. It was full of dancing, singing, acrobats, special affects, water, light shows, amazing costumes and insane props. What a fantastic cultural experience. It was strange to see everyone had their phones up filming and where standing up throughout the show.
We went to a noodle place for dinner where I ordered fish noodle because if you ask for some kind of meat you could get all kind of things! I had an entire fish in my bowl. It was a huge bowl for only $4!
