Journey with Lydia - Day 5 Finale

There's only one flight a day from Wuhan to Hong Kong.  At 8:30 PM.  We had another full day ahead of us!

We started out by returning to the area where we stayed in 2005.  It was virtually unrecognizable with construction on the street and cranes everywhere.

The White Rose Hotel, where we had stayed, was dwarfed by the new buildings constructed around it.

White Rose is the building in the middle.

We confirmed that the Carre Four, the French version of Wal-Mart that had been a major shopping hub for us and other families with us in 2005, remained right where it had been.  I'm guessing that its interior hasn't changed much and there are still live creatures for sale in the food section - but I wasn't so curious that I went in to verify!  No need to re-new that memory.

East Lake is the largest urban lake in China.  It was picturesque and a nice break from other, busier areas.  We went on a paddle boat ride, watched fisherman, checked out the lotus plants, and generally goofed around.

There were lots of school groups visiting the lake.  Children were very excited when they saw us - yelling Americans!  Foreigners!  Look!  I'm sure they didn't think we knew what they were saying.  One little girl came up to me and spoke a few words in English, so I started a conversation.  Her eyes got huge, like she had accidentally engaged with an alien.  Pretty soon we were swarmed by the other kids who wanted to either gawk or join in the discussion.  Though they aren't anything new, I'm always entertained by these exchanges.

Wuhan University has a huge city campus - we actually had no idea how big; it look a long time to get from one end to the other.  It looked like any nice college campus in the US - the demographics were just a bit different!

We were starting to get weary, but persevered to take a quick trip to the Wuhan Provincial Museum to see a set of 2500 year old bells that were unearthed in 1978.  These aren’t just any old bells; there are 64 of them, they are said to weigh more than half a ton, have directions on how to play each one inscribed directly on the bell, and are in perfect pitch (truly a musical marvel given their age).  The bells were last played in 1997 in Hong Kong in a celebration of the handover of HK from Britain to China.  After that, a crack was discovered and it’s been decided that the bells should not be played again.

 
At that point, we decided we were done - we'd seen all of Wuhan that we could one on trip.  We returned to the hotel to pick up our luggage and we were off to the airport. Journey with Lydia 2012 was complete.