City Lights

Wow, is the night over already? At 5:45 a.m., the alarm clock woke us up. I had ordered a wake-up call from the hotel for 6 o'clock, and it worked, even though the young lady at the reception didn't speak English. We communicated through a translation app that turned my spoken word into Chinese.

After a hearty breakfast, we headed to the airport at 7 o'clock in the sunrise, with a temperature of -3 degrees. The tour guide told us that this already huge airport is being expanded again. By the 2022 Winter Olympics, it will be three times as big as it is today. The Olympic Games have had a tremendous impact on the city and the whole country. Many things were modernized for the Summer Olympics, and the country has opened up further. The former Olympic Village is now apartments for many families. For the next games, a new high-speed rail line is being built into the interior of the country, and they hope for further opening.

The check-in and security check went smoothly. Terminal 3 is modern, covering 10,000 square meters and 3 kilometers long.
We were assigned seats 33 K and L on the Airbus A320-200. The flight duration for the 1,057 kilometers is estimated to be 2 hours and 20 minutes.

This time, we also stood in a line, but with the whole plane. There was a traffic jam for takeoff, and we had to let about ten planes go before us at a rate of 2.5 minutes each.
After a relatively smooth flight, we landed in Wuhang.
When we took our suitcases from the carousel, we unfortunately had to realize that one of the suitcases was extremely damaged. It had burst open on one corner and was missing an entire wheel on the opposite corner. So we had to go to the baggage service counter. The employee there also communicated with us through a mobile app and offered us 100 Xuan, which is about 13 €, for the damage. This amount seemed too low to me, so when I waved it off, she called a superior. When she saw the suitcase, she said in very good English, 'that's not a problem, we will give you another suitcase.' Then a man appeared with two suitcases of the same size for us to choose from. Since our suitcase was now a Samsonite, we accepted this offer. The quality is certainly not great, a bit worse than our suitcase, but the suitcase is new. The processing of the formalities also went smoothly and quickly, so the tour group didn't have to wait too long for us.

The sun was fighting against the haze at 16 degrees, which seems to be part of the cityscape here, as one third of the 8,400 sq km city area consists of water.
Wuhan is a 13 million-city in central China. 10 percent of the population are students, making it probably the largest university city in the world on both sides of the Yangtze.

Our hotel, the Howard Johnson Plaza, is located directly on the river near the city center. With its 41 floors, the upper ones forming a sphere, it fits in well with the cityscape here in the center. The rooms are also spacious and clean. However, you can see that the furniture and especially the bathroom are a bit dated. But it is very centrally located. We could stroll along the promenade, which is probably one of the most beautiful waterfront promenades in the country. The pedestrian zone and the entertainment district, populated by young and old people, are not far away either. There is even a Big Ben here that we listened to during the 9 o'clock chimes. We had dinner in the city in the evening. After our arrival, we had the rest of the day free and used the time for a city stroll.

All high-rise buildings on both sides of the river radiated in colorful lights, with the choreography of the light show coordinated with each other.
From our room 2505 on the 25th floor, we have a great view of this spectacle of lights. Actually, we wanted to shoot a little video of it, but at 10 p.m., these lights actually turn off. So we'll have to postpone it until next time...

We ended the evening with a cocktail and a beer in the hotel's Skylounge on the 39th floor. Actually, this city would be worth a longer stay, but we will already continue tomorrow morning at 8 o'clock. After all, China is a very large country.