Life tends to have modes of interesting and same-old-same-old. For the past few weeks, my life has moved out of the former and into the latter. When my life is in s-o-s-o mode, there’s not a lot to write about on a blog, unless you’d like to hear about grading 200 final exams and watching episodes of 30 Rock. Sometimes simultaneously.

Graciously, TJ and Jean offered a s-o-s-o shake-up, inviting me to Hangzhou for the weekend. I’ve made no secret of my love for Jean and how I’d steal her from TJ, so when he chivalrously told me he would sleep on the floor and I could share the bed with Jean, my response was, “I told you you’d better watch your back.”

I’ve been to Hangzhou once before and, while I liked it well enough, I’ve never really felt the desire to go back. It didn’t take long for me to remember why: the traffic. Hangzhou’s a pretty big place, but there’s no subway, and the city is in perpetual rush hour—the fastest way to get anywhere is to walk, which would be great if the city weren’t spread out around an enormous lake.

That’s why it took us an hour to get to Jean’s apartment from the north bus station, a cab ride TJ said should take maybe 25-30 minutes. Jean got home from work about a minute after we arrived, so we all threw down our stuff and headed out for dinner. We walked to the restaurant through a touristy place called hefang jie. It was nice to have something to take pictures of again; Huzhou is nearly exhausted material-wise.

Chinese cities are full of areas like this—newly-built ancient-style buildings and streets lined with shops selling “traditional” Chinese tchotchkes.

That and, of course, the traditional Cuisine of the Ancient Golden Arches.

The mix of old and new is hardly remarkable, but there’s just something about traditional red lanterns hanging in front of golden arches.

TJ, a self-described pizza aficionado (or, you know, someone who ate pizza 3-4 times a week when he lived in America), has eaten pies high and low in Hangzhou. So he brought me to the place with his favorite pies: Eudora.

These kids.

If they didn’t make such a photogenic couple, I don’t know if I could handle the cuteness factor.

TJ knew the goods on the menu, so without regard to balance or health, we ordered away. First the waiters resurrected a traditional Western restaurant tradition:

Free bread. It’s so easy to forget the little luxuries like a free breadbasket. And it came with three spreads:

I was so happy to see pesto that I lost all my articulation skills. Pestoooooooooooooomonomnom.

Next out came Calamari. Very batter-y. The way I like it.

For many years of my life, Calamari was the only seafood I’d eat, for precisely the reason that it didn’t taste like seafood.

Nachos!

Acceptably nacho-like. Cheese in large quantities help anything.

After a long-ish interlude, the pizzas came out. First, the heart-stopping Four Meat Pizza.

And the cholesterol-busting Four Cheese Pizza.

The real reason I wanted that one was because it had bleu cheese.

We all agreed that the meat one was better, but TJ didn’t like the cheese one enough to have a second slice, so more for me! Bleu cheese!

While I agree with TJ’s assessment that these are very decent pizzas, they were so greasy we had to ask for napkins to blot them.

These things were downright reflective—the perfect meal for Narcissus. The cheese one was especially shimmery. It reminded me of my pilgrimage to Pizzeria Bianco in Phoenix, widely considered one of the top pizza joints in the whole country, where I also found the pizzas distractingly oily.

And after a stint with DQ Blizzards, we went back to Jean’s, where, for the first time in about three months, I got on Facebook.

I think the Chinese government is onto something blocking Facebook, because those were 20 depressing minutes. I don’t miss my life in America, but it’s weird and a little sad to see all my friends growing up—getting married, losing weight, posing like models, getting new boy/girlfriends, and having actual careers while I just float around Asia alone stuffing my face, traveling like a vagabond, and trying to figure out what the hell to do with my life.

I’m about to vagabond again; on the 18th my friend John and I will embark upon a five-and-a-half week Spring Festival Sojourn. Stay tuned for more eating, drifting, and wondering how to get a life.