Xi Hu and the Silk factory

Sorry there will not be any photos today, it's been a long day and there just weren't too many photos!

We had a busy breakfast this morning at the hotel (every meal is "busy" with our new girl!), then Jessica came to meet us and we went to West Lake for a ride on a boat and to take in a little scenery.  The west lake area is beautiful, and we learned, while we were on the lake, that the picture on the back of the 1 yuan note is actually West Lake!  Very beautiful, very big.  Most of the scenery I saw was wrangling two little girls, one who was wild from overstimulation the other who was wanting to hang off Mama because the first one needed to be held by Mama to not fall over things...  Being Mama to two is going to leave me either broken in two pieces or very strong, I hope it's the latter!

After the short little cruise on the lake (maybe it was 15 or 20 minutes at most) we walked over to a garden in the same area that was packed with tourists, mostly chinese, and several school groups on holiday.  The park was beautiful but the crowded areas were definitely wrecking havoc on little Violet!  She was getting quite overstimulated with so many people & so much commotion around. We put the hood on the ergo over her head to try to keep it a little quieter for her, but it was still tough on her.  Maddie got to feed the koi and the white peacock, so she had a great time!  After the garden our guide took us to a silk factory.  They used double silk cocoons to make silk blankets- they showed us the process of opening up the cocoon (not unspinning like you would do if you were going to use the silk thread)- but opening and streatching it over a rainbow shaped frame to make what they called a "hat".  They stretched about 40 cocoons over this "hat" frame to make a single "hat", then 4 women took it and pulled it out to the size of a mattress so it was an extremely thin layer.  They pile many layers of these together and they are the batting of a quilt/comforter.  They say the silk blankets are said to be warm in the winter and cool in the summer.  This is the specialty of Hangzhou, and the next two rooms were silk blankets for sale (silk inside)- and there was a store at the end for clothes.  I think we were "supposed to" buy a silk blanket, but they are not really my style and we just don't need a silk blanket.  We bought Maddie a qi pao (that was a bit overpriced for the place it was in compared with the quality) to satisfy things, but overall I would say the silk factory was a let down.  We would have preferred to visit a temple!!!

We came back around 12:30 and BOTH girls were wound up overstimulated, so we just had lunch in the hotel restaurant and then got them both down for late naps- both were ready. 

What we learned today is that when Violet gets overstimulated, she gets WILD and wants to run and run.  After her nap she played peacefully and quietly and was not nearly so wild.  So we had a quiet rest of the day after that- walked down the road to find some chinese formula (she still won't take the american formula, and we didn't have any more luck with the chinese formula tonight either), then went to get some dinner & came home.  Tomorrow we are going to a water town with our guide and driver- should be a fun day but hopefully not completely overrun with tourists, that tends to be LOUD and crowded and really tough on Violet.