BIKE DAY!

We woke up and had a western style buffet breakfast at the hostel. We had intended to go to Suzhou, but after reading about Hanzhou in the book, it seemed as though it was a similar pretty city, and would be worth exploring for the day instead of spending 4 hours on the bus. The others agreed, especially since we were all still tired from the mountain.

We walked around a nearby island in the lake, and sat by the water for awhile. This was the hottest day we had and we were all sweating just sitting there. Peter and Sunia dumped water on each other. We talked to an Australian father and daughter for awhile, and then went in search of ice cream.

It was surprisingly tough to find, but was refreshing when we finally did! I didn’t feel very well after that, I think because it was the first sugar we’d had in awhile. Then we went walking and found a little stream that we could walk through on rocks.

We found a spot to have lunch and had mutton and mushroom dumplings in a soup. I tried a little baby shrimp that had eyes! Luckily it didn’t taste like anything. We were all exhausted so we headed back from a quick nap and wound up sleeping for 2 hours. It was difficult to figure out the Chinese characters on the air conditioner, so our room was really hot and miserable. I was definitely feeling crabby!

Around 7 we rented bikes from the hostel, which was a great way to see the city. We biked mostly on the roads, but they had bike lanes and there were lots of bikers and mopeds. No one wears helmets, but I felt pretty safe.

We made a couple of stops to see the sights as we made our way around the lake. We peeked over a fence to see a cool show in the middle of the water. People were running through the water in different formations.

We biked through the center of town and found a restaurant for dinner. There were lots of live animals in the front, but we ordered well and had mushroom and pork, spring rolls, fried pumpkin, chicken with veggies, and clams.

We biked back to the hostel arriving around 11. We were still exhausted and headed to our rooms to shower and repack. It was nice to be staying in the same place for 2 nights in a row.