Chongqing City

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Thursday morning we disembarked from our ship, the Yangtze 3, at 8:30 AM. We were up about 6:15, down to breakfast and ready to leave with plenty time. The view we had as we opened the curtains was unbelievable. The river is very busy and there are multiple cruise boats and others moored along the shore. We were tied up under a huge bridge that has a road on the top and a subway line underneath. I thought we were near an airport from the sound but it was only the subway rumbling by every few minutes. It is foggy and all you can see is tall skyscraper buildings, some look quite new, others older, and some in stages of building. They say the bird of Chongqing is the construction crane. They are everywhere. We have seen new roads and bridges being built in all the places we have visited. I guess they need effective ways to move the 34 million people who call Chongqing home. We can't imagine living in that mass of humanity!

Our walk to the bus was less than ideal. The pier was extremely busy with men carrying supplies to the ship for the next cruise that would be leaving around 5 this afternoon. There were many obstacles to watch for on the ground and a flight of stairs that were wet and quite unsafe IMO. I am surprised more people do not trip and hurt themselves. When we got up to the street level we were bombarded with people selling junk. Maps of China in English, toy birds that fly in the sky for a short period of time and kites. We just shake our head NO and carry on.

Our guide was very interesting and our first stop was the Chongqing Zoo to see the panda bears and many other animals. The zoo is quite large and includes a playground and water park so a wonderful place for the natives of Chongqing to have some green space. We see many older grandparents, like us, with their little grandchild. The children are always dressed very well and very cute! They sometimes wave at us and of course sometimes we take their picture.

We left the zoo and went for lunch at a nice restaurant and had a good round table meal. After lunch we went to an old part of Chongqing which used to be the area where porcelain was made. There still are some pottery shops but it is a huge warren of alleys filled with shops selling all the same things we have seen all along plus many food stalls and MANY MANY people. Wall to wall people and we had to keep close tabs on each other and our purse and camera. We spent the afternoon there until 4 PM and then headed to our hotel- the Radisson. It is a beautiful big hotel. Our room is lovely and we have decided to forego the dinner and order a pizza from room service. Why would we do that, you ask. Well our wake up call is 5 AM and we leave the hotel at 6 AM for a flight to Shanghai at 9:30 so we are both very tired, both fighting a cold, and need to just chill this evening and hopefully go to sleep early. We have to have our checked luggage out at the door at 10 PM tonight so we have to be organized.

This trip is not for the faint of heart! I know how we feel and I can't imagine how the group members who are ten years older than us are keeping up, but they are. I really give them a lot of credit!

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Photos

Entering the Chongqing Zoo.
Doesn't she look enthused? We are both feeling somewhat under the weather with a cold. Almost everyone has had it.

The pandas.
This zoo has probably the most pandas in captivation . We saw three little pandas cavorting with each other. Very neat!

Panda eating bamboo
Lots of bamboo growing in this zoo. Pandas have a great life in this zoo. Eat, sleep and poop.

Grandpa and his grandson
We see so many grandparents with their little grandchildren. So the parents can work, the grandparents look after their grandchildren. Remember, couples probably only have one child, although now they can have two children but many do not because it is too expensive.

A rickshaw???
Not sure if this is a type of rickshaw but some little boy was having a fun ride.

Chinatown in Chongqing
You would think all of Chongqing would be a Chinatown but this was where the porcelain used to be made but now it is a very busy area of shops selling high end goods and food shops/restaurants.

Man carrying bags of deep fried donut chips
We saw many people carrying shopping bags of these crisps. We found the shop that sold them and they were giving out samples. One or two were quite good but that was enough. This man was bringing in a load to refresh the shop.

Our room in Chongqing
We have had beautiful hotels in all the places we have been. The trouble is, we arent anywhere long enough to enjoy. In Chongqing we stayed in and had room service because we were exhausted and needed to chill.