Cruise down the Yangtze

Monday, April 4 was Tomb Sweeping Holiday here in China so we took advantage of the holiday from school with a cruise down the Yangtze River.  

We flew from Guangzhou to Chongqing which is the world's largest metropolitan region with a population of 30 million. Our first meal was famous Chongqing noodles. The locals love their fresh, spicy noodles so we enjoyed some of them too!

The city has an old town area with lots of fun shops and some fun food. Rick and I both managed to find us a new outfit and eat a delicious curly potato. The potatoes would be a big hit at the fair.

Terry is eating a potato and Karen has a cotton candy flower.  The flowers came in all colors and sizes and were quite creative. 

The Three Gorges Dam Museum and the Flying Tiger's Museum were both quite informative. The Flying Tigers made us proud to be Americans in China. 

This is a picture of our group in front of the Three Gorges Museum - there were 30 of us for this trip. 

Rick and I in Chongqing with the Grand City Hall in the background. 

This is a picture of the river in Chongqing from an overlook at a beautiful public park. Chongqing is usually overcast with lots of cloud cover. 

We boarded the ship on Friday evening and sailed down the river with beautiful city lights and bridges all around us. 

One of my favorite shore excursions was to a Buddhist temple that is built on the side of a rock cliff. We climbed up hundreds of stairs to get to the top of the temple.  There was a fun peep hole at the top. 

You had to cross this monkey bridge before you climb up through the temple. 

Another fun excursion was to the Shennong Stream by small boats.  The boats were oared by trackers who were local men who made their living from their boats. The oldest man was 88 years old and was still paddling away. 

This is our ship - the President No. 8.

This is a picture of the locks before we went into them around midnight Sunday night. 

Imagine our ship followed by a large barge and a smaller cruise ship all fitting into the lock at the same time. Let's just say that the locks were enormous. We went through a series of 5 locks that took a total of about 3 hours.  Ships go up and down the river through two different sets of locks. 

This last one is a picture of the locks during the day. We took a tour of the dam the next day at the end of our cruise. 

We had beautiful clear days for the final days of our cruise. This is a picture of the dam. 

A cruise down the Yantze River has been on our bucket list for quite a few years. We would have come all the way to China just for this experience. It really was spectacular!