Hangzhou

In the death throes of the school year I decided to take the role of 'trip organiser' and I rallied the troops (if you can call seven teaching-exhausted women troops) for a weekend away in Hangzhou, home of tea plantations, fancy hotels and general tranquility, or whatever the Chinese counterpart of this might be.

The original plan was to head to Yangshou near Guilin but that involved a flight followed by a three-hour bus ride and that seemed like too much of a headache. Instead, we opted for a one-hour train journey to the leafy vegetation of the five-star Millennium Hotel Hangzhou. I'm getting classy in old age.

Hangzhou is a city known for its beauty, in particular West Lake, a large inland lake laden with cherry blossoms and rural trails. Our hotel was a few kilometres away from all of this but we didn't mind; less lake, less crowd. Neither did the rain--all weekend it poured steadily down. 

As such, much of our adventure involved indoor pursuits of our hotel: swimming and gyming and drinking wine in good company.

In a brief window of reprieve, we made it outdoors and were rewarded appropriately. Fields of tea stacked themselves up the hills and we even found a properly Chinese meal.

As far as last weekend trips with friends go, I couldn't complain.