River Cruise

We’re nearing the end of our Yangtze River cruise. I haven’t been able to post recently because the internet is unstable when you’re cruising through a Gorge on a ship, but we’re near a big city now, so fingers crossed this goes!

This is a fair example of the scenery en-route.

On our second night there was a party, with a charming entertainment by the crew and a general celebration by our group that their Tour Manager wasn’t waking them up early to see Pandas. We enjoyed a buffet dinner and alcohol was consumed in semi-moderation. After all that we discovered that three couples in our group were celebrating Golden Wedding anniversaries, which seemed as good a reason as any for dragging them up on stage for some minor embarrassment and cake.

Today, we passed through the Three Gorges themselves, on the way to the dam, and took an interesting excursion up a tiny side tributary of the Yangtze to discover how the people who live in these mountains survive.

The day finished with a special Farewell Dinner. The Captain, wearing a rather natty white uniform, made a speech in Mandarin Chinese which was all very fine… “Friends across the water” and so forth, but you get the distinct feeling that he’d really rather get back to the Bridge as soon as possible. We’ve all been there… 😁

Oh yes, and to finish up, another one of our group celebrated a birthday. Her 21st. Naturally.

A guided tour of the Three Gorges dam tomorrow (it’s bigger than Luxembourg or something like that) and then train onwards from Yi Chang to Wuhan/Hankou.