Paparazzi!

9/15/12

Today (9/15/12) we headed out to see three of Wuhan’s most popular tourist destinations: Yellow Crane Tower, Breakfast Street, and the Yangtze River. Our first stop, the Yellow Crane Tower. We entered the gates of the park, and walked to the top of the hill, and then headed across it. Surrounded by a concrete jungle, the surrounding green trees, bushes, flowers, and old temples were nice. We climbed the bazzilion stairs to the top of Yellow Crane Tower, and soaked in a beautiful view of the Yangtze River winding through skyscrapers as far as the eye could see.

 

One hilarious thing about this day trip though, was the amount of people asking to take pictures with us! One after another, people would take a picture with us. I did an epic photo bomb of a huge group shot of about 40 older men on a tour. At first I was joking, smiling towards the camera for like 2 seconds, then I started walking away, but then they yelled “come back!” So I obliged. Every five minutes we would have people yell “Hello!” from their scooters, corner shops, and windows. So we’d say “Hello!” back and had a good laugh.

After the massive Yellow Crane Tower we walked 10 minutes to Breakfast Street, famous for its street vendors. I had a deep fat fried banana (delicious! I felt like I was at the MN State Fair or something…) a squid kabob (pretty tasty, just really really rubbery), and a chocolate fish (melted chocolate wrapped by a dough, also delicious). I was tempted to have a frog on a stick, but decided to try it another time. The roads were packed, and people, scooters, and stray dogs buzzed around. Flashing red signs with mysterious (to me) words were everywhere. Once again, I felt like I was in a movie. Last night we watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. In one of the opening scenes they are in the streets of Shanghai. It looked exactly like where we live! Here there are clothes hanging above the street, food vendors all around, and flashing red signs with Chinese Characters lighting up the street at night. We eventually headed another 5 minutes walk to the edge of the famed Yangtze River. It is huge! Barges and boats floated alongside the skyscraper lined river (which sadly is brown, not blue). Below and to our right, some people were actually swimming in the poo colored water! Ewwwwwwwwwwww! I’m tempted to do it sometime though, just to say I swam in the Yangtze River J We’ll see….we’ll see……