Yangtse Cruise: Sat & Sun

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Saturday

China is not a small country and when one travels, you don't do it by half!! We enjoyed a relaxing start at 9.30am and, at the airport, ticket and passport names matched perfectly (this time)!! However, one of our Antipodean cousins tried to go through Security with a Swiss Army knife in his hand luggage, no doubt frustrating our Guide and nearly causing a diplomatic spat between China and Oz!!

The flight was a tad bumpy, but in just over an hour we touched down in Wuhan - 'this travelling is a breeze' we thought!! Two sequential coach journies of five hours and then ninety minutes brought us back to earth, so to speak. We boarded our Yangtze Cruise Ship @ 10pm in Mao Ping, ready for some much needed kip - boarding entailed using a well-used funicular and having to cross other ships that were banked in parallel against the shore.

Sunday

A 6.45am start (shudder) revealed a murky day - we are starting to realise that smog is not a problem confined to Beijing!! The morning trip was to the Three Gorges Dam Project - I'll spare you the statistics about volume of water and power generation. This is best visited on a clear day - today was murky.

In the afternoon we gave the optional trip a miss and settled for a relaxing few hours chilling out in the lounge - this turned out to be an excellent call as the murk turned to rain!!

The evening started with the Captain's Drinks Reception where we sampled Chinese sweet sparkling wine and after dinner, a fashion show of traditional dress through the ages.

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