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Friday, May 23, 2008
Caroline and I enjoyed another delightful breakfast from the 31st floor of the Salvo Hotel Shanghai. Once again, I managed to make it an around the world event:

First stop: Asia for sushi, dim sum, fried noodles, boiled duck eggs and sesame bun.

Second stop: Europe, for crescents’, bread, brie, cold cuts, pastry and hard roll

Third stop: America, for Western omelet, hash browns, pork fritters, min-cinnamon roll and jelly pastry

Final stop: Asia, for sushi, pastry, dim sum, pecan pie and fried noodles


It was a wonderful morning!

After a pleasant flight from Shanghai to Xichang we boarded the Victoria Anna for our Yangtze River cruise.

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Today we headed upstream to the Three Gorges Dam Project. The dam is the largest in the world and is scheduled for completion in 2009. When the dam goes completely on-line, the water level behind the dam will rise 175 meters, flooding millions of acres of farmland and displacing nearly 1.3 million people, most of them peasant farmers. We’ve made many acquaintances on the ship, from our table mates to the ship’s staff. Most of the staff are men and women in their early to mid twenties. All speak exceptional English and are very good at their jobs on board the ship. We enjoy having conversations with them.

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Continuing along the Yangtze, today we ferried up the Lesser Gorges, including a sampan ride up one of the minor gorges of the Lesser Gorges. Along the way we observed monkeys jumping through the trees along the gorge walls and hanging coffins from the gorge walls. The hanging coffins are somewhat an archeological mystery; centuries ago, when a river person died, the family would construct a wooden coffin, place the deceased inside, seal the cover and somehow hang the coffin hundreds of feet above the river on the shear vertical cliff walls of the gorge. Fascinating.

As we returned from the Lesser Gorge excursion, our tour director, Dick pulled us aside. As you can imagine, this made me extremely nervous; my mind raced with possible reasons for his need to speak to us, none of them very positive. Dick had heard via the ship grapevine that we were in China to adopt a baby; he shared with us that he had an adopted daughter from the Philippines. As an expression of gratitude, Dick pulled us aside to inform us that he had upgraded our breakfast and lunch to the executive dining room; a gesture for which we were most appreciative. We shared with many of the staff and other passengers we met that we were traveling in advance of finalizing our adoption of Ellie. The many kindnesses and expressions of gratitude we received from complete strangers have been overwhelming.

Monday, May 26, 2008

Today we visited the city of Fengdu, known as the City of Ghosts. We visited the temples of heaven and hell; surprisingly, the god of Hell is above the god of Heaven, so rather than going down to hell and up to heaven, we went up to hell and down to heaven.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

We disembarked from the Victoria Anna early this morning in the port city of Chongqing. Chongqing is the largest city in China, having a population of 33 million people. We enjoyed a great tour of the city and the surrounding country side; our young guide Nini has been wonderful, perhaps the best personal guide we’ve had to date. We will spend the night and in the morning, it’s off to Beijing to meet up with our adoption travel group.

Quote of the trip thus far: Tracy, our server in the executive dining room, this morning to Caroline, (whispering into Caroline's ear) "Your husband like traditional Chinese cooking. I think that why he so fat."