Day 12 Hangzhou

Date with the train ticket office, stopping by the bakery for breakfast. We were told when we were last here wednesday to come back Friday because the tickets are only released 10days in advance. So here we are Friday morning trying to get these tickets from Shanghai to Hong Kong before they're sold out and 1st problem is passport related so we try for Shenzhen instead(within china & plenty of options from there to HK) and its possible but tickets not released till 3pm. We had wanted to walk round the lake so not a problem to come back latter. The walk is pretty a couple of temples on the way and a restaurant that's been serving since the 1800's. It's a shame we are not seeing the best of the area the smog is dense & being winter the huge flower gardens aren't what they could be but the heat is anything but relentless and the crowds are quite manageable.
I wasn't sure whether to mention it now or just when we do the China wrap up but this is a wealthy place they all wear tomorrows fashion, the cars well Im gonna go on a bit about the cars, every fairly successful model of any car band has a copy with simply a different badge on the front to identify it a fake and there's no shortage of euro cars the waterfront here having Maserati, Lamborghini, Audi, GMC, Merc, Ferrari, Aston Martin, WV, RollsRoyce dealers plus their home grown sports variant and all those brands I've seen on the road since arriving as common as a mondeo.
Poor Rachel wants a smartphone for keeping in touch and has been watching everyone here pull an iPhone from their pocket every other second & I see the Beijing Apple store never opened today to start selling the iPhone 4s because the crowd waiting outside was too big.
Picture today is smog over the West Lake we walked around briskly in 3hrs.
For all those on Facebook it looks as though we have been beaten by the Chinese authorities for the time being & haven't been able to get on Facebook for a few days & my phone has dropped off the network too so we are on email or viber(if it behaves) only for now.