Hangzhou (West Lake and Leifang Pagoda)

The kids had Good Friday off from school so we decided to do a little weekend trip to a nearby city called Hangzhou. We picked Meagan up from the train station as she was getting home from a school trip to Nanjing to learn about the Japanese invasion of China. She learned about the horrific things that happened during that time. She said it was very sad and disturbing but also very neat. We took Meagan from one train to another and took the train to Hangzhou. We got in and got into our hotel and went to sleep. The next morning we got up and had a breakfast made by the hotel we were staying in. We wanted to go to West Lake and asked how to get there. We were told that it was only about a 15 minute walk but with our kids it took a little more than 20 minutes. We got down there and found all these boats that would take us to the little island in the middle of the lake. Before we got to the island we stopped at these cement statues in the water called "3 Pools Reflecting the Moon". Our boat driver told us it was the place that is depicted on the 1RMB note. We now wished we had started figuring out where all the places on the money were and tried to visit them all. We walked around the island and took a few pictures. This one was fun and after we took it we noticed all the other people around us wanting to do the same. It was kind of funny. Then we got back on our boat and went back to the main shore and decided we wanted to walk over and see the Leifang Pagoda. It looked really cool on the outside but when we got into it we found that it had been rebuilt. They built it over the old pagoda and we could see the foundation of the original pagoda that had been built over a thousand years. The view from the top was pretty cool also.