What should I avoid in Hangzhou?

Skip West Lake between 1 and 7 October. That is National Day week, and the Broken Bridge turns into a shoulder-to-shoulder shuffle with tour-guide loudspeakers crackling over the water. Most Saturday afternoons from April to October tend to feel the same, so go before 7am instead, when the Su Causeway smells of wet willow and osmanthus and you can hear oars knocking on the hand-rowed boats. Skip the climb inside Leifeng Pagoda too: the original tower collapsed in 1924, and what stands now is a 2002 rebuild with escalators and a lift behind a ¥40 ticket, about $6 at 6.69 yuan to the dollar. It looks better from outside anyway, and the view of it from Changqiao Park costs nothing. If you want a pagoda with a view over the lake, Baochu Pagoda on the north shore is a free 15-minute stair climb from Beishan Street. For a boat, pay at an official West Lake ticket pier, where the posted rate is around ¥150 to ¥180 an hour per boat, and ignore the men who quote a price on the path.

The scam that catches most first-timers tends to start on Hubin Road or Hefang Street: a friendly pair of "students" asks to practise English, then suggests a tea house, and the bill for six thimble cups can come to ¥800 or more. Say no and keep walking toward West Lake. In Longjing Village, sellers wave you off the road into family courtyards and offer "this spring's West Lake Longjing" at ¥100 a bag, but real pre-Qingming leaf from these hills costs several thousand yuan per 500g, so that bag is likely from another province. The China National Tea Museum on Longjing Road is free, and you can smell and taste the difference there before you spend a yuan. At Xiaoshan Airport and Hangzhou East Railway Station, ignore anyone who approaches you inside the hall with a car: a metered taxi from the airport to the lake runs roughly ¥120, and Metro Line 1 covers the same trip to Longxiangqiao station for under ¥10. Set up Alipay with a foreign card before you land, since many Hangzhou stalls no longer keep change for cash.

Menu anxiety in Hangzhou has one clear answer: skip West Lake vinegar fish, the dish every guidebook names. It is grass carp under a dark, sweet-sour sauce, and the flesh often tastes of pond mud, which is why plenty of Hangzhou locals joke about it themselves. Lou Wai Lou on Gushan Road serves the best-known version at lakefront prices. Order Dongpo pork and Longjing shrimp instead, both mild, soft and easy to like on a first night. Grandma's Home near Hubin serves both, with most dishes under ¥50, though the queue at 6pm can run past 40 minutes. Hefang Street is worth 20 minutes for the lanterns and the sharp smell of frying stinky tofu, but the skewers there cost double what they do two blocks east. Skip Songcheng as well: the park charges about ¥300 for a one-hour stage show inside a replica Song dynasty street, and it sits 30 minutes southwest of the lake.

Hangzhou's weather is the trap nobody names. The plum rains run from mid-June into early July, and July and August often pass 35°C with almost no shade on the Bai Causeway. January brings a damp cold near 0°C that gets into your coat, and indoor heating south of the Yangtze is still patchy. Tonight's reading is 20.7°C, overcast, with 81% humidity, which is mid-October at its mildest. On the Qiantang River, stay behind the railings near Liuhe Pagoda when the tidal bore comes in around the 18th day of the eighth lunar month, because the wave has swept people off the lower embankments. Don't stack Lingyin Temple, Longjing Village and the lake into one jet-lagged first day: Lingyin alone needs two tickets, ¥45 for Feilai Feng and ¥30 for the temple, and about three hours. These are costs and discomforts, not dangers. TTDI scores Hangzhou 7.8/10 for solo-traveler safety (see the TTDI Solo-Safety Index).