Once situated and refreshed, we met up at the lounge for Happy Hour.
A well presented albeit limited selection of foods and beverages. The Club Lounge was a cozy space to enjoy our hotel’s amenities and commence our travel companions’ first international trip with us.
The room affords views of the world famous WestLake, telescope for effect.
Club access is nice when needed. Access can also detract from the travel experience though. After all, we travel to try new food venues and explore new eats.
Sometimes, it’s difficult to leave food on the table so to speak, by not taking full advantage of the perks.
Fortunately, we get comped access because of our preferred chain (IHG)’s loyalty program. If you do pay for the upgrade, just be sure you’ll use the facility fully.
Lunch off the Jiang-Hang Grand Canal. The Grand Canal starts in Beijing and terminates in Hangzhou. Purportedly the longest artificial waterway in the entire world!!
A pleasant ferry ride from a Hangzhou stop, we floated on the water for an hour and enjoyed the scenery. Plenty of local folks fishing from shore and birds fishing from their leafy perch above the water.
After this light lunch, we scraped our initial plan for a second follow up lunch and decided to save room for a light afternoon tea back at the hotel. Then dinner.
Almost bypassed a bustling dumpling shop. The wife really wanted to hit this spot, waded in and staked out a 4-top about to finish. She secures her table, we’re in!!!
No glassed-in dustfree Show Kitchen dumpling assembly line here. Every inch of available free space was a dumpling station. Every order crimped ala minute!!
If you can, I’d love to see a pic of the machine – love this stuff!
They sell the sugarcane stalks in Chinatown, but I don’t know what people do with them.
In India, the stalks are for juice outside, and you can also buy peeled and cut-into-bites sugarcane to gnaw on at home.
