May 28

Morning visit to the Muslim mosque, which is not very Muslim looking at all. But there are Arabic elements here and there. There’s a narrow alleyway leading to the mosque, which is flanked by vendors. And since I enjoy shopping, that was my favorite part. I probably would have liked it more if we had had more time, and I had had more money exchanged. So I only ended up getting a couple tshirts. I also didn’t want to have to carry too much, since we’d already sent off our checked luggage, so anything I bought we be added to my carry-on. No worries though, I have three weeks in Shanghai (and a weekend in Hong Kong) to buy the rest of China.

We went to a museum after the market, only I don’t remember its’ name and I really didn’t look at much there. We were all very tired and found benches to nap on. While the culture of China is very interesting, and being here is pretty amazing, some ancient aspects of the culture are really not that interesting. I can only stare at so many clay pots and crumbling statues.

Lunch was good (although some people opted for pizza). Then off to the airport, for a quick hour-long flight to Chongqing (pronounced Chong-ching). We just took a bus in Chongqing to get to the boat for the cruise, and that ride was only about 30 minutes. We had a cute little guide talk to us during that time, and tell us a little about Chongqing. It has three self-explanatory nicknames: 1) Mountainous City – because it is situated amongst mountains, and for that reason is one of the few cities where people do not ride bikes, because it would be a pain to have to ride uphill. 2) Fog City – because of the mountains blocking it, they get a lot of fog, and don’t get much in the way of wind to blow it away. And apparently it really is fog, not smog. 3) Furnace City – in the summer it gets super hot, last summer having some record breaking highs of about 120 degrees. A little something else of interest about Chongqing…it has 33 million people! That is Beijing and Shanghai combined. Although I think they are going overboard with calling the whole area a city, since it apparently takes 4 hours on the interstate to drive across. Only about 9 million actually live in the city center, and the rest live on the outskirts. But the city is a site to see, a bit like San Francisco with the tall buildings and all the hills, only much denser.

Our cruiseline is Victoria Cruises (so I know it’s going to be fabulous!). I think it’s the only American-run cruiseline on the river, and one of the nicest. The staff is Chinese, but they are decent at English, and there are translators, and the Director is from the U.S. For passengers there’s our LSU group, and then a bunch of seniors. Pretty cool though. We got drinks at the bar (Jenny and I split a bottle of red) and walked around a bit. After it got dark we were up on the observation deck, and since we hadn’t started moving yet we could see all the big buildings in Chongqing lit up. There is something very surreal about the whole experience, sitting on the deck, drinking a glass of wine, realizing “I am on a cruiseship in CHINA”. Got a nice buzz and went to bed.