Busy, busy, busy!

We've been so busy that I haven't had time to post. That, and I've been having trouble with the internet access at our hotels. It's been very slow and I am using an older laptop that operates slowly as well. So it has been difficult to update our blog. Another curious thing is that I cannot access ANY blogs on the internet from any of our hotels yet. I can access the editing area for our blog but not the blog itself.
It is now 11PM on Thursday, 15 May. We are checked in to our hotel in Wuhan, having arrived about an hour ago from Beijing. The hotel is very classy, with very well-appointed rooms and baths. Yesterday we went to the Great Wall of China near Beijing. It was incredibly smoggy with thundershowers threatened. We were allowed time to climb the wall so I decided to give it a try. Eileen took one look at all the irregular steps and the steepness and length of the effort and decided to go for a cappucino instead. It took me a while to do it with frequent pauses to catch my breath, but I made it to the top. As I encountered the Chinese people climbing along with me they all gave me the "thumbs up" sign of encouragement. I guess they don't see too many old, white-haired westerners very far up on their wall. One old gal in our group, while she was coming back down, was approached by a Chinese man who helped her along as she descended with his whole family trailing along behind. The Chinese we have encountered have all been delightful and helpful without exception.
We got off the wall just in time. As we descended we could hear claps of thunder and saw some lightning flashes in the distance. Near the bottom we caught a few drops of rain. I don't think it's too wise to be on that wall during an thunder storm so I'm glad we were on our way down when it started to open up.
My legs were pretty rubbery after I got back down, but to my amazement, I wasn't too sore this morning - that is until we got to the Emperor's Summer Palace today. There is a tower there called Bhudda Incense Tower that is perched on a hill overlooking the lake. It is incredibly picturesque and beckons one from on high. I decided to pay the extra 10 yuan admission and climb up to it. Eileen decided to let me. On the way up I found all of those muscles that I abused the day before but it was worth it. I got a lot of great pictures from there that I am going to try to post when I can get time to edit and upload them.
Tomorrow evening after a day touring Wuhan we will go aboard our cruise ship for 5 nights on the Yangtzee River. And although I will finally have time there to do some posting I won't be able to because there is no internet access from the boat. I'll have to wait until we get to Chongquin or Chengdu to be able to update the blog.