The breakfast club assembled again this morning half the table with their champagne and mimosas, the other with their juice (Frank and Frank). Had the muesli and scrambled eggs they had eggs benedict this morning but in the steam tray it wasnt holding up well the hollandaise had congealed and it was on toast rather than an English muffin.
Although the schedule has us leaving at 8am for two hours of river cruising, we left dock at 7:15am without the standard anchors aweigh music. We start our sail through the Wu Gorge on our way to the Lesser Three Gorges where we board smaller boats to explore. A picnic lunch is also on tap for today.
Lots of pretty gorges today. Think Ill just put the best four pictures in and let them speak for themselves.
Our picnic lunch was the site of the top right photo up on the cliff side. Getting to and from the picnic pavilion, we had to run the gauntlet of souvenir vendors. Lunch was sort of picnic foods salads, bockwurst, chicken, ribs, and chocolate brownies.
If you look at the pictures above you will see green water and brown water. The brown are gorges along the Yangtze and the green are of the lesser gorges which are tributaries that feed into the Yangtze.
Our boats were shapes like little pavilions (if they had four floors or more, they would have been shaped like pagodas) though all the roof tiles were actually fiberglass.
Where we stop for lunch we were not fed the very small whole chickens on a stick. They also had whole small fish on a stick as well. It was something like fifty very steep steps to get up to our lunch pavilion.
On the way back through the gorges (retracing our morning steps), we did get to see a good view of hanging coffins. Apparently this made it easier for the dead to get to heaven if they were already half way up the hillside.
I can count at least three coffins in this crevasse, maybe four. Mind you this was several hundred feet above the river level today, meaning it would have been twice that high up before the initial flood of the river up shear cliff walls.
I took a nap for most of the return trip between the cold and the cold pills, napping is important. We got back to the ship around 3:30pm so I took another nap until it was time for the last gorge the Qutang Gorge the shortest and narrowest of the gorges.
After dinner of tenderloin and baked potatoes with an asparagus crab soup it was time for the staff talent show.
I made it about 45 minutes before I had to hit the hay as tomorrow be have to be off the boat and onto the buses by 8:30am, a full half hour before the usual time, and an hour and a half before this mornings departure time.
After the 2-for-1 cocktails in the bar last night from 5:45-6:45pm (1 whiskey sour, 3 Rob Roys), plus wine at dinner, I was fading fast and was sound asleep by 10pm. Didnt even get the pictures transferred off the camera and onto the computer!
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