I took more pictures of our hotel room this morning. The mattress we have in our room is very firm and the padding is very thin. At first I thought they forgot to place the mattresses onto the bed. But they are actually mattresses! Since we were very tired last night, the firmness of the bed didn’t matter at all. Also, we have a few pillows that are very heavy and firm! It feels like they weigh about 5 lbs. I have no idea what is inside these pillows.
City view from our hotel room.
Our hotel provides complimentary breakfast up to 10am. Breakfast meaning not your usual eggs, bacon, sausage, cereal or hot cakes. The breakfast here is congee (fish fillet or plain), noodles, steamed vegetables, dim sum, some beef, etc.
This is their dining room in the hotel.
Hotel lobby/entrance/lounge area.
After having a huge breakfast, we did some walking to explore the city a bit. The sky in Wuhan seems like it never clears! The smog here is really bad. There were two occasions when I had to cough because something went inside my throat. It just seems like there is dust everywhere. Even last night, the smog was very visible.
On the streets, there are so many people. Like I mentioned previously, everyone shares the road. The pedestrian walkway is shared by people walking as well as people on their scooters. I noticed that the babies here are not inside a baby car seat. The mom or dad just hold their baby on their lap while the vehicle is in motion. Even parents ride their scooters with their young ones sitting or standing in front of their parents. The entire family on one scooter wore no helmets. When we have our baby tomorrow, most likely he will be sitting on my lap inside our driver’s van.
This city seems very old. There is one tall building about 15 stories high that is left abandoned and empty. The apartment next to our hotel looks like it will almost crumble. We walked up on some pedestrian bridge to go to another street. The stairs on the bridge are coming off. The stairs looks like it was made from some soft material and not concrete. While we were standing on the bridge to take some pictures, I definitely felt the bridge shake as cars passed by underneath.
This morning, I saw a few people doing their exercise on the top roof of their apartment. Also on the roof, I saw one person hanging their clothes up to dry and a guy with his son playing some game. On the streets, I noticed many people eat their food while walking and saw old ladies sweeping the streets.
The streets of Wuhan has a lot of small retail shops and eating places. The area where our hotel is located doesn’t have stores that we saw in Hong Kong such as The Body Shop, HM, Zara, Chanel, etc. I haven’t seen Starbucks yet! But of course we saw two McDonalds. Most food shops sold nuts. I guess nuts is very popular here. Even our hotel provided nuts as part of the complimentary breakfast.
While we were walking, I noticed something moving inside some bushes. When I looked closer, I saw 4 rats! One of them was munching on something. My curious husband looked closer at the rats to see what else they were doing. All I wanted to do was go back to our hotel room! I thought that we’ve explored the city enough.
Last night we asked our guide whether she would visit USA. She said maybe but she would never live anywhere else but Wuhan City. She mentioned that her parents and grandparents have lived in Wuhan for many years.
After we came back to our hotel room, my husband did a video call with his family back in San Francisco. We showed them our hotel room and pretty much talked about our trip so far. I called my mom using Google Voice. While my husband was talking to his family, I was preparing our son’s food and other things we will need when we see him tomorrow. I pre-measured his milk formula as well as his rice cereal and put them into these pre-measured bowls with 3 – 4 compartments. I also boiled water and will pour the water into his bottles after the water cools. For his snack, I bought these Gerber cookie puffs and poured them into a small container. Good thing we have a fridge in the room. I placed his teether thing inside the fridge since I heard that the cold teether is good for baby’s gums.
On the bed, I gathered other things so that I don’t forget to bring them tomorrow. He has his froggy changing pad, toy cloth booklet, diapers, plastic zip lock bags that my sister-in-law Veronica gave me to use for dirty diapers, pacifier wipes, baby wipes and documents we need to bring to the registration office. I will carry all of his items inside my backpack. Today is our last day as two. Tomorrow on Gotcha Day, we will be three!
My husband and I are still in West Coast time. In afternoon, we pretty much slept until 9pm. It is 11:23pm right now in Wuhan City while it is 7:23 am back home. For dinner, we went to the restaurant on the second floor of our hotel. The restaurant is actually open for 24hrs. The only customers the restaurant had was just me and my husband. My husband ordered spaghetti with clams and I got something smaller like their won ton soup. My won ton soup was pretty good. Our dinner cost 180 Yuan (rmb) or about $27 US! Our guide will be with us Monday – Friday starting tomorrow. Hopefully she will take us to good eating places with reasonable prices.
its so narrow over there