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Hangzhou (take 2)

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Wednesday we got up early and headed to Hangzhou. JP and Robyn felt confident that they knew where to go and what to see this time around. We got off the train and headed toward the bus stop to catch the Y2 bus towards Xi Hu - West Lake. On the bus we sat near a woman who spoke English and told us what stop to get off at to rent bicycles.

After getting off the bus we walked through a very nice park along the lake to get to the bicycle renal place. We rented bikes and the bike system here is great. All along the the lake and around the town they have bike stops where you can drop off your bike or pick one up. So if you decide you want to walk across the Su Causeway (a fantastic 3 mile long pedestrian causeway), you could drop your bike off before hand, walk the causeway and then get a bike on the other side and be on your way.

After renting bikes, we rode to the Leifeng Pagoda and saw lots of turtles in the pond in front of the pagoda, then headed towards Longjing Village. Longjing Village is most well known for its Longjing tea. This is the most famous green tea in all of China. Little did we know that to get there we had to ride our bikes up hill... a long way. Ok well Robyn knew about the hill and just didn't mention it to anyone...needless to say everyone was quite mad at her. We got to the top and saw lots of women picking tea leaves, men roasting the tea leaves and everyone else was trying to sell us their tea! We did find a very persistant woman who brought us to her house to taste her tea - she wanted us to buy her tea so she gave each of us a cup of tea. When we bought some tea she took away the sample cup. We also ended up eating lunch at her house.

After lunch we rode down the hill through all the tea fields and found our way back to town. We then dropped off the bikes and leisurly walked across the Su Causeway, picked up some bikes and rode around the lake to turn in the bike cards to get our deposit back. Then we hailed a taxi and headed for the train station to go home!
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