Part 2- The train ride & Lost in Hangzhou
After our long wait we headed for our train to Hangzhou, only to find that the tickets we had purchased were standing room only. We were stuck in a crowded train car standing for the next 8 hours. We originally had to split up into two cars. Madelynn, Nick, and I ended up in one car. Madelynn very aptly stated… “Well this sucks”, while Nick the eternal optimist stated “Every little thing will be alright”. To which Madelynn looked at him like he was insane. To distract us Nick decided to tell us some riddles, which kept us somewhat distracted for the better part of 2 hours. After which Katelin and Zac ended up joining us in the car we were in. After awhile we pushed our way into the actual car rather than the hallway of that car. Once we hit Shanghai things got quite a bit better as a large amount of the people got of the train and we were able to sit down. On the train right Katelin had made friends with a couple who were also going to Hangzhou and once we got to Hangzhou they helped us to purchase our train tickets back to Changzhou.
Believe it or not the train ride was only the beginning of our adventure. After we had our tickets home we decided to head towards our hostel. We didn’t quite know how to get there so we started following the directions we had written down and searching for a bus. We kept going and never seemed to find a bus. We asked a few various people how to get there and they pointed us in the direction of a taxi. We politely declined and said we would just walk. After walking for awhile we asked again at a gas station. The man showed the sign for timeout and went into the station and got us a map. He showed us on the map where we were and where we were going which was a good long distance away. He gave us the map to keep and after we left the gas station we decided to get a taxi. There were five of us and only four could fit in a taxi so we wound up getting two taxis. We circled a spot on the map and the first group showed it to the taxi driver while the second which consisted of Nick and myself kept the map. Not that the map did us much good though as it was all in Chinese.
We hopped into our taxi and showed the driver where we would like to go. He seemed a little confused for a moment but then he was off. He stopped once asking us if this was the correct location, we politely told him we didn’t know. After which he pulled up his taxi’s GPS and drew some characters to have it show him where to go. The second time he stopped, he got out and talked to the people around asking if they were expecting us. They seemed very confused but based on the surroundings we knew it was the right place. We paid the taxi driver and he left and we headed off to seek out our hostel. Before our group had divided we had agreed if we couldn’t find each other when we got there to meet at a restaurant called Grandma’s. Nick and I eventually found a map on which I saw the west lake museum which I knew was somewhere close to our hostel. We headed that way but it was to no avail, we couldn’t find anything out. We headed back to the map and tried to seek out the tourist info booth but never find it. After we had searched for awhile Nick had an idea. He asked me if my kindle got wifi to which I replied yes. At which point we headed to a hotel and asked if we could use their wifi for a few minutes to find the address of our hostel. We searched for a few minutes and then found the address to our hostel. After writing it down we headed out again. We walked up and down the street we knew it was on a couple of times but didn’t have much luck. We did however become very familiar with that stretch of sidewalk. Eventually we found a tourist info booth and asked if they knew where this address was. We were pointed in the right direction and kept asking at every booth we found until we were directed to our hostel.
Once we made it to our hostel the receptionist asked for the name for the reservation, at which point Nick gave his name. The receptionist told us that the rest of our group had already been there 2 girls and a boy. We were glad to hear that our friends had made it there. She said they had left about a half an hour ago for Grandma’s and said that they were probably still waiting as Grandma’s was a very busy restaurant. After showing us to our room, she directed us to the restaurant and we were off. On the way we saw the French bakery which one of our groups from Changzhou who had previously been to Hangzhou had mentioned to us, which I pointed out to Nick. After which we did a double take as we realized the rest of our group was inside and we had found them. We were excited to be back together as a group again. They informed us that they had just given up on Grandma’s because it was so ridiculously busy. We headed into the French bakery and picked out a few items to eat as we hadn’t had anything all day and by this time it was around 1 or 2 in the afternoon.
After we had picked out our food we headed back to the hostel to put away all of our stuff and to enjoy our spoils outside on the patio at our hostel. We enjoyed all of the food we had chosen. After we were done eating we grabbed what we thought we would need and headed out to explore Hangzhou. We walked around the lake a bit and then headed over to Grandma’s to attempt to eat there. After we had gotten our number we discovered burger king and really cheap ice cream. So we got some ice cream and spent some time at burger king. While there we checked a couple of times at Grandma’s to see if our number had come up. However, after a couple of hours we gave up and most of us got food at burger king. On the way back we stopped at the bakery so Katelin could grab a bite to eat. Afterwards we went back to the hostel and got ready for the night. Because of a long day with a virtually sleepless night we all passed out by 9.
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