Nathan had to help us with this next leg of our sideline tour. I hadn’t been able to buy tickets from Hangzhou to Shanghai prior to my meeting the girls in Beijing (remember the blog about the 3 hour standing in line fiasco) and we needed a place to store our luggage so we could do our little day tour of Hangzhou, so Nathan was kind enough to get up at 7:30 in the morning to help us. Not many friends would ride a bus for 1 hour (really 2 hours back & forth) that early in the morning, to help someone older than his parents (I swear if I ever win the Lotto Jackpot I will pay off their student loans – can you make a contract on a Blog? Well considerate it a binding contract, Nathan and Elisabeth).
With Nathan’s guidance we got our Shanghai soft seat train tickets and stored our luggage. We parted and caught a taxi to West Lake to starte our tour. At West Lake we snacked on green pea ice cream, watched a fountain show, took pictures of cute kids and enjoyed the scenery. Next stop was the LingYin temple, which is one of my favorite spots. It has hundreds of Buddha carved into the side of the mountain and a really old temple with lots of stairs, more Buddha, monks, and incense.
Last stop of the tour was WuShan Square for last minute souvenirs and a noodle bowl. We did ok with the souvenirs but lousy with the meal. I had bragged to Margie who likes noodle bowls (really a noodle soup) about this great mushroom and bamboo shoot noodle bowl I had eaten at this one noodle restaurant. Well it was a bust because I could NOT say mushrooms/bamboo shoots noodle bowl and I hadn’t had enough sense to get someone to write it down for me beforehand. It was very disappointing that no one in the “famous tourist spot” restaurant was willing to come over and help us. I KNOW I said “no meat” (bu rou) in Chinese CORRECTLY but I think they were pissed because we only wanted the cheap noodle bowl and not a variety of more expensive dishes so we got a bunch of noodles with lots of ground meat and gravy on top and no broth. This is also the same area where I got ripped off when buying a rip-off watch- go figure.
We made it to the train on time and caught a taxi to the Hotel to drop our bags off and then back to Lisa Pearls to meet the rest of the GA girls for round two of pearl shopping. After they had spent almost all of their yuan we decided to celebrate our last night with a Sundae from McDonalds. We went back to the hotel and the girls packed all the rest of their bags. It was great that they had overstuffed bags cause they gave me lots of stuff they didn’t need anymore that are hard to get or recognize over here –Tylenol, hairspray, face wipes etc.
