Mr. & Mrs. Vandebilt + kids

Yesterday we had every intention of spending the whole day relaxing in a couple of Hangzhou’s many parks. The day got off to a slow start as we both wanted to sleep a little later than usual but we eventually made it to the first stop, Huagung Park or as the locals refer to it “A Place for Fish in Pond Viewing”. We spent the better part of the morning here reading on a bench hoping to catch a breeze. It was unbelievably hot and muggy.

At around lunch time we decided to make our way to the northern shore of the lake. After getting some food we went to one of the small islands in the lake in search of a nice patch of grass and having a nap, but just as we entered the park it started to rain. A little rain would have been fine but the skies just seemed to open up and it poured. Since it was so humid the downpour was accompanied by a rather impressive thunder and lightening show. At times it felt like it was directly above us and at one point the two of us jumped back inside our little shelter as we were sure the huge bolt of lightening had struck the trees right in front of us. The lightening and the thunder seemed to be happening simultaneously without any pauses to count mississippis.

The rain held off long enough for us to get back on the mainland and hop on a bus. We spent the rest of the day at our hostel in the common area on the couches.

The night before we were asked to leave the common area early as they needed to fumigate for cockroaches. The bugs seemed to have outsmarted the hostel owners, and migrated to our dorm room and into my bed. Needless to say I wasn’t overly thrilled when I moved my backpack off of the bed and uncovered that a 3 inch cockroach had taken up residence. I quickly retreated to the relative safety of outdoors choosing to chance it with the many cats that were roaming around as opposed to meeting another cockroach.

Jacob spent about the next hour scouring our room and taking my stuff outside to me so I could shake it out and repack it. After finding my first roommate’s friend and tearing the bed apart we doused the room in raid and went to sleep.