… and it just happened to be my 63rd birthday.  

TOO BAD I FELT LIKE HELL.

Whatever I caught, or was being released through the Chinese medicine treatments, it hit me FULL FORCE on my birthday. I just could not stop blowing my nose, hacking, and all I wanted to do was lie down.  I was SO GRATEFUL that this happened on the LAST day, and not at the beginning of the trip.

Somehow we got ourselves packed up and off the boat.  I hardly remember it.  I do remember hearing from Mary (the Dictator) that now we have two stops to make and then a THREE-HOUR bus ride to Wuhan.  REALLY?  I thought the boat was supposed to dock in Wuhan, but apparently not.  We were in Jingzhou.  And actually, I didn’t really care.

But I should have.  This is an ancient city with 2000 years of history and is quite the place to see.  We drove a short distance and found ourselves at the Jingzhou Ancient City Wall. We rode in multi-passenger golf carts to one of the gates of the city.  Because today is the National Holiday (Labor Day), there were people and festivities everywhere!

Within the Ancient City, they were putting on performances which were REALLY cool. I’m glad our timing was such that we caught some of this on video (you must be on https://www.freebirdsfrolic.blog to see these videos)

 

And I REALLY ENJOYED the warriors.  Below is the warriors video …

 

This reminds me so much of the movie THE GREAT WALL which I can’t wait to see again now!   Click here to see the trailer of The Great Wall, the movie, on YouTube.

Next stop was the Jingzhou Museum which housed a mummy that was 2000 years old.  I love mummies and should have been impressed, but there were so many people in the mummy room and I just couldn’t deal with it.  It IS amazing that a person, buried in 167 BC, is so preserved.  One of the theories, as to why he is so preserved, is the mercury they found in the coffin, which has an anti-bacterial effect.  I’m glad Dennis got this great shot. Look at this guy’s entrails!

Even though my Chinese Medicine Doctor told me not to eat anything cold, it WAS MY BIRTHDAY after all.  It tasted SO GOOD; first and only ice cream of the trip.

We know there were a lot of cool things to see in this museum, but to be honest, we were both on OVERLOAD.  So we sat and watched people at the entrance to the museum and even garnered a little attention ourselves.  Believe or it not, most of the people we saw everywhere we visited were Chinese, not other tourists.  And they were quite intrigued by us “Big Noses”, as they call foreigners.  In fact, many times we were asked to be in pictures with them, and children were brought to us for photo ops.

Back on the bus again and now we had a THREE HOUR DRIVE to get to Wuhan.  Thank God Dennis and I loved to sit in the back of the bus during the trip and no one else wanted those seats.  So I was able to lie down and sleep for most of the 3 hours.  I was told by Conrad I was snoring pretty good.  We did make a stop, about half way through, at one of those big roadside travel stops to stretch our legs and visit “The Happy Room” (the toilet), as it was called on the trip.  But this one ~ oh my God it was disgusting.

We finally got to Wuhan and discovered that we were NOT going to the hotel first, but instead going straight to dinner.  We had about 45 minutes to explore the area around the restaurant, and guess where Dennis wanted to explore?  We looked for a bar for a Birthday Drink, but like everywhere we visited, it was difficult to find one (wait …. I thought the Chinese LIKED to drink?)  But we did find this small market and lo and behold … BUDWEISER (the king of American beers)!

Time for dinner and you guessed it ~ another Chinese buffet.  I was SO DONE at this point that I didn’t eat very much.  However, the group did sing Happy Birthday to me, and Dennis ordered a special Chinese sweet for our group of 30 to celebrate my day. Upon research at home, it was a Sweet Tangyuan Glutinous Rice Soup.

It was so very “sweet” of him and Mary (the Dictator) to make it happen at the last minute.

We FINALLY made it to our hotel and I was SO HAPPY to be “home”.  We stayed at the Marriott Renaissance and it was VERY WESTERNIZED.  When I brushed my teeth, I even ran it under the tap because I forgot where I was for a moment (only if you boil the water one can consume the tap water ~ even for native Chinese!)  The Wi-Fi was strong and Dennis enjoyed working on our blog.  I know …. we’re a little crazy!

I was happy to go to bed and try to sleep.  Poor Dennis ~ I guess I snored pretty badly since I was so plugged up.

But we were blessed with a NOON CHECKOUT the next day before our journey to the airport and our LONG journey home.  Some of our travel mates had to leave the hotel at 5:30 am to catch their flights!  YIKES!

It’s the little things that make the biggest difference, and that late checkout was THE BEST BIRTHDAY GIFT EVER.