When planning the China part of our trip, Hangzhou and Suzhou were recommended as lovely places close to Shanghai and well worth a visit, so we decided to spend a few nights in Hangzhou with the option to make a day trip from there to Suzhou. And bullet trains go to Beijing directly from Hangzhou too, without the need to go back into Shanghai, so perfect.

Out first experience on China Railways was the one hour, 100 mile high speed train from Shanghai Hongqiao station to Hangzhou Dong (Hangzhou East). Debbie had booked all of our train tickets on the official Railway 12306 app as soon as they went on sale 14 days prior to each journey, and this was our first test of whether she’d got it right. You don’t get a ticket, or even an email confirmation, but the reservations did show in Debbie’s Railway 12306 online account and a scan of our passports would supposedly provide access to the station and onto the train – we’ll see. Well, it turns out that Digital China most certainly does extend to the railways (not sure why we were surprised) and everything worked perfectly. The station was huge, more like an airport and complete with check-in desks, handling thousands of passengers extremely efficiently, and the train was super modern and very clean. On arrival into Hangzhou, we confidently headed to the ‘ride hailing area – West’ and ordered a taxi on Didi, which quickly arrived on the street corner whilst we were below ground at the meeting point with no way of getting to the car, so we cancelled it. There were 50 or more people waiting for their vehicle and there was obviously a system, with a noticeboard showing which bay their car had arrived into and a barcode scanning process, but with nothing in English we were struggling to understand what to do. We tried again (with the correct pick-up point this time, ooops!), the car driver told us where he was but the ‘system’ said he’d not entered the underground car park – but eventually we sorted it, somehow, and took an 8Km ride to our hotel for just £2.50.

The Holiday Inn Express Hangzhou Westlake East was exactly like any other Holiday Inn Express (partly the reason we’d chosen it), conveniently situated ‘close’ to the West Lake tourist area, next to a mainline train station, on top of a metro station and less than £50/night including breakfast. Debbie’s Platinum status got us an upgrade to a ‘lake view’ room, but there was precious little chance of seeing the lake through the windows (22nd floor, can’t be easy to clean) in the murky weather and with the lake about a mile away. We also received a complimentary fruit platter – apple, orange, banana, and a large handful of Devil’s Food (tomatoes). Technically they are a fruit, but really?! This was a good budget hotel with an excellent breakfast, a robot delivering room service and a laundry room, the latter being a god-send when there’s no obvious local laundry shops (but surely there are Chinese laundries in China) and you aren’t prepared to pay extortionate hotel prices. However, the washer-dryer technology defeated Debbie as she was unable to load the mini-app without a Chinese phone number, but the helpful guy on reception set the machine going for her and we got our much needed laundry done for free.

We managed to get the transport technology to work though and set up the Hangzhou metro and buses on our WeChat apps, enabling generation of a barcode to pay as we had in Shanghai, and took the modern metro 2 stops to the city centre and lake shore. Stunning – Marco Polo did apparently write in the 13th Century that Hangzhou was “the City of Heaven, the most beautiful & magnificent in the world”. Debbie really hadn’t expected to see a Louis Vuitton, Prada & Gucci beside the lake, but in a city of 14 million people why wouldn’t there be decent shopping? It is very much a tourist destination for the Chinese, especially those escaping Shanghai for the weekend, and while we saw no other Western faces the infrastructure is clearly gearing up for English-speaking visitors. West Lake is the main draw and it’s a beauty – pagoda-topped hills rise over willow-lined waters as boats drift slowly under arched bridges and past great expanses of beautiful water lilies – an idyll of leisurely charm. Walkways, perfectly positioned benches, parks & gardens around the lake offer a thousand and one vantage points for visitors to admire the faultless scenery. It is possible to walk the entire 9 mile circumference of the lake, but we just wandered for a couple of miles and then took a loop-line boat to see the rest of the lake and get back to the Metro. Debbie eventually managed to get a seat outside and got ‘chatting’ to some young Chinese blokes via a translator app – one of them asked how old she was (rude!) and whether he could connect on WeChat. She politely swerved the request, lost in translation, imagining that she’d be in receipt of some ‘interesting’ pictures later in the evening if she accepted! The sun was shining and on the lake it was like we were in the middle of nowhere – looking one way there were just rolling hills as far as the eye could see, but in the opposite direction the skyscrapers of Hangzhou reminded us that we were on the outskirts of a city with a population 50% bigger than London.

The next day we resigned ourselves to not visiting Suzhou as there was far too much of Hangzhou still to see and set off in search of the bus to the Lingyin Temple, a couple of miles west of the lake. Our most intrepid public transport adventure so far, the £0.50 fare took us and masses of Chinese tourists to one of China’s biggest and most important Buddhist temple complexes. It was pissing down with unforecast rain by the time we arrived, and having left our brollies behind we needed to buy new ones – £1.50 each, you have to love China. On purchasing tickets we discovered that Steve is a ‘senior’, so half price for him – there are some benefits to being old. A series of huge & impressive temples headed uphill, one with lots of baby buddhas (a hatchery?), another with lots of women reading religious texts (and nodding off), the obligatory giant buddha and so on. Further into the site, and away from the crowds and pilgrims, we found a more peaceful temple complex with a magnificent view over West Lake and to the city beyond. We almost, but not quite, made it back to the right place on the bus but did manage to walk the rest of the way, so a relative success.

The young ladies with curlers in their hair in preparation for their Saturday night out amused us – just like Liverpool!

Steve did a bit of shopping – very unlike him but he was down a t-shirt due to it being eaten by a deer in Japan, so off to Gap it was. Steve pondered that it was probably fake, especially given that it was less than £10, but Debbie pointed out that a 3 story Gap shop in a high rent area sandwiched between Gucci and Prada was unlikely to be an outlet for dodgy Chinese forgeries! We managed to find some good Chinese food, and with the help of a translator app ordered a selection, but the duck was a little challenging to eat with chopsticks. Desperate for some Western food one evening, we headed a stop further on the Metro and found where all the Westerners were hiding – Wade’s Bar & Grill, a huge American-style place on the 1st floor of a shopping street that did great burgers (with the obligatory pineapple, and a new combo – Avocado – for Debbie), Canadian Poutine (chips with gravy & cheese) and some reasonable red wine – bliss.

Hangzhou was a lovely little interlude and we could’ve quite happily spent a couple more days based there, but train tickets had been booked and so we made our way by metro back to Hangzhou Dong station – destination Beijing…..