Breakfast was a little weird, apparently the kitchen was closed, as there weren't many guests. Initially, they wanted us to go out to a noodle place, which, of course, wasn't suitable for me, and I suggested that they provide us dinner instead, so suddenly breakfast was ok. It eventually included 3 eggs overeasy, 2 little sausages, 4 slices of bread, butter and hot water, which was tolerable. Our guide and driver arrived and took us to visit the Hubei Provincial Museum, which was very interesting.
There was an exhibition of the excavation of the tomb of the Marquis Yi of Zeng, with lots of bronze and lacquer artifacts, the history of Chinese civilisation, culminating in a 2000 year old bronze sword which was still sharp enough to cut 20 sheets of paper, the history of the pottery, another tomb which held lots of gold and jade artifacts. Darryl also snuck off to visit the exhibition of the Sino-Japanese war. Our guide was too superstitious to come into the area with skulls etc, so waited outside for us to have a look.
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Just a few minutes away was the East Lake (Tingtao Scenic Area). We took an electric bus to go around and see the sculptures, and beautiful environment. One lake was cut off from the rest, with a footbridge zig-zagging across, and one side had goldfish and the other side had huge carp which were about a metre long. Along the other lakes, you could hire a hammock to have a sleep or a boat to go out. In the shallows were lots of lotus flowering.
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Lunch was at a restaurant and there were 5 dishes shared between the lot of us. For the first time the guide and driver sat with us to eat. The food was very tasty.
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| I got to try lotus flower seeds |
After lunch we went to the Yellow Crane Tower. This tower was built in the 1980's and follows a number of previous towers which were destroyed by various means. The very first was tower was built for military observations, but all since have just been places to visit, and over the centuries many poets have visited and written about the beauty of the place. There was a huge bell in a pagoda, which you could pay to gong. The icon of the tower is 2 cranes, standing on a snake (the hill it is built on is snake hill), standing on a turtle (the name of the hill across the Yangtze). Wuhan is really 3 cities in one, and there are 3 rivers passing through it.
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We were pretty tired by the time we were dropped back at the hotel, but went to get groceries at the Lotus store, as the next day we only were being provided breakfast, and nothing until breakfast the following day. As it was our wedding anniversary we bought a bottle of wine. The tour company had the guide buy us a lovely gift for our anniversary. We were happy with a pack of Chinese playing cards, but she also bought a photo album. Reception phoned us to say that they would deliver our breakfast to our room in the morning.
You went the same way as we did - it seems only we done the museum separate from the lakes + light display show and the Yellow crane tower was an intermission stay from about 3 1/2 hours on the way to the ship. Our choice on that day was lunch or dinner, we ask to get lunch what our tour guide had to pre-book. Funny that, there was a wedding and b-day party already going where we had lunch and the choices were mind blowing huge. When we came on board the ship we did get smorgasboard dinner as well as part of the separate package deal of Victoria Cruises, but you were on a bigger ship then us, but funny that you had the very same people as us as ship crew. I could not believe seeing the same faces in the dance group you took photos of - but Desire Jiang who became a hotel receptionist, we had.
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