Wuhan Day 1

I should really title this post as "How to survive without a tour guide" but I don't know if we survived it.  Wuhan is considered a "small" city (10 million people) in the center of China.  I don't think they have ever seen an American and absolutely no one speaks English.  At least in Beijing, you would find someone that learned English in high school.  We ate breakfast in the hotel and ventured off to find a laundromat.  We were told you could find some and they were usually cheap.  Yeah well, there's a lot of things I was told that haven't actually been true.  We found one close to the hotel and walked there.  Have I mentioned that no speaks English and that we can't read Chinese.  (I'm regreting not taking a crash corse in Mandarin.) After quite an ordeal and $120 later, we have clean clothes.
Next, we decide to go see the sights.  Hmmm, not sure that was such a great idea.  We got a taxi and showed him a picture of where we wanted to go--East Lake.  We had no idea our destination was as large as it was.  We later learned that the East Lake is the largest lake in all of China.  It really was a beautiful area.  We even saw the sun (which was a first since we arrived in China).  After being dropped off, we thought we would grab a quick lunch and then do some activities.  We started looking for places to eat.  I had no idea that finding lunch was going to be that complicated.  First, you have to find a place that looks decent, then you have to see a menu.  The menu is the key.  If there are no pictures for you to point at, then you can't eat there. We walked for hours and stopped at several food places and never got lunch. I can't even begin to explain how frustrating the situation was. Even with several translation apps on our phone, we aren't being successful. Tired and starving, we saw a place with coke and chocolate.  Hallelujah!  It will at least tied us over till we can find a place.  We are so far from our hotel, that we decide to catch a boat back to the other side of the lake.  Nope, the last boat has already left. We are too late.  We walk all the way back to the main highway and hail a cab.  We are done!    I show him the business card from our hotel and off we go.  We ended up having the restaurant in our hotel cook us a hamburger.  I don't know about everyone else in my party, but I'm ready to be home.  My nerves are shot. The girls are being real troopers and I am grateful.  I felt bad for them today.  I know tomorrow will be better.  We will have our driver and guide back, but most of all, it is gotcha day.  We get our son tomorrow (Monday) at 2:30!