Autumn Holidays

Time's been flying so fast. The last post I wrote was in Summer and it's Autumn already!

We had a long vacation this time.With the mid - autumn festival and the National Day holidays falling in consecutive weeks,

we paired it up with our Annual Leave and took two long weeks off.

Abhi's parents visited us during the hols and other than doing the regular Beijing tour,

we also visited Shanghai and Hangzhou.

We took the day time speed train from Beijing South Station and reached Shanghai around 7pm.

We had three days to tour around-

The first day we headed to Oriental Pearl Tower, this is Shanghai's TV Tower.
The highest observation level is called the Space Module and is 350m high and will entrance tickets cost 150 rmb. 

At 259 m high there is an outdoor observation deck that has a glass floor and it takes some time

to gather your guts to walk over it. This is the best part of being in the tower.

The tower also has a revolving restaurant that has Lunch and Dinner buffets.

After lunch, we took the Bund Sightseeing Tunnel to get to the other side of the Hunagpu river. The cost of

the ride is 45rmb per person.You get to board a cable car which moves along the tunnel

and the ride is just over 5 minutes. When we first boarded we saw the lights in the tunnel and were quite excited but

the ride was disappointing.What we got was a ride through a tunnel of flashing neon lights! So if you're visiting you can skip this and take the Metro ride to cross the river.

We spent some time walking around and taking pictures of the Bund and returned to the hotel.

The next morning, we took the speed train to Hangzhou- One of the most scenic cities in China. The train ride from Shanghai is a about an hour and a half.

We got off at west lake and the view is really beautiful, it was a nice bright day and weather was pleasant. We had hired a tour guide for the day who took us around the Imperial Garden. We walked around and had lunch at a small local restaurant.

We then took the boat cruise to view the scenic spot of the three pools-The image on the reverse side of the one Yuan note.

The three pools are three stupas in the lake that seem to float on the water. The cruise also gives you a view of the outer lake and Hangzhou's skyline.

The view is breathtakingly beautiful and just looking at the nature which is a sharp contrast to the high rise buildings and fast life in shanghai give you a wonderful feeling.

{ {In the evening, candlelight flowing out from the small holes in the stupas, reflecting on the lake looks like some small moons, forming a delightful contrast with the bright moon in the sky and creating magical images on the water
surface. This is how comes the scene of "one moon in the sky, three shadows on the lake." The scene is especially magical on the night of Mid-Autumn Day when the biggest and
brightest full moon is overhead. Three Pools Mirroring the Moon is surely a vision feast for Hangzhou citizens. Source- Internet} }

We weren't lucky enough to get a view of the lake during the night time since we had an evening train back to Shanghai.

We ended our Hangzhou tour by visiting a Tea factory where we saw a traditional Tea Ceremony.
**(If you're on a group tour just enjoy the ceremony and don't fall into the trap of buying the tea which is probably charged 10 times the actual price.)


The last day of the tour, we headed to the EXPO. It was crowded and we only got into a few pavillions. Took pictures of most pavillions, walked around and headed back to Beijing.

Back to the Jing, and back to reality. The holidays was such a good getaway from routine life. Slowly getting colder.
Sweaters and mufflers are out...Soon we will have long grey days... But the optimist in me is already feeling Christmassy... :-)