Getting There - Aneel's Travelogue

The plan for today was to head over to Shanghai South Train Station and hop on the first train to Hangzhou and spend the day admiring West Lake there. This would probably have worked out better had I found a way to pre-book a train ticket. When I arrived at the train station, I found that the earliest train I could get a ticket for wasn't for hours, and it didn't make sense to spend 5 hours in trains and stations.

So I headed back to town and visited the Old Town instead. The bazaar area of Old Town is heavily restored, with lots of improbably grand buildings, entirely covered with souvenir shops of various price ranges. Hidden in the middle is another famous garden. I had the good fortune to visit in the rain, which I think deterred a lot of would-be visitors.