I’m going on my first escorted tour in May. I’m going to China, which requires a visa (except for the 72/144 hour visa waiver if you continue to a third country). I applied for the visa last Friday at the Chinese consulate in Houston (yes, I was actually in Houston) and picked up my passport with…
1 week to go before my 2 week tor of China. This will be the first escorted tour I’ve ever been on – so I am curious about the experience. I’ve been on many excursions during cruises, but this is the first land based trip (although there is a river cruise and many flights…
My adventure begins. Last night I returned from Asia (Qatar), a little later than expected thanks to United Airlines. At least the flight across the pond on Lufthansa was good. You don’t realize how quiet the 747-8i really is until you get on Airbus and can’t even hear the video with earbuds on. I’ve…
I arrived at the airport 2 hours before the flight. No queues for checking in, but a considerable queue for Pre-Check (security). I found the United Club lounge was conveniently located across the aisle from my departure gate. Inconveniently the lounge didn’t open until 07:30 (my scheduled departure time) so I went to the next…
I’m through immigration and customs. The flight from Toronto was good. Air Canada actually serves alcohol even in economy. I was actually one of the very few people to have an empty seat next to me. I guess my evil genius plan to try and have a full row to myself partially worked. The tour…
This morning we started out at the Temple of Heaven. I did see it from a distance during my last visit, but this was my first opportunity to see it up close. It was very nice and our tour guide explained that it was built in 1420 (same year as the forbidden city) and that…
Today we left the hotel at 0800. We took a scenic drive to the Great Wall. The section we visited was 33 km long and was the inner wall. I was surprised there were not so many people visiting. I scaled much of the wall, but did not reach the very top of the mountain….
Today was an early start, with a lot of travel. We left the hotel at 07:30 and went to visit another government operated store, this time pearls. After the shopping stop we visited the summer palace. This is certainly a place that you could spend many hours. Below pictures are from the summer…
Today was a fairly late start to the tour, which was fine because yesterday we did not arrive to the hotel until around 21:30. I was up late booking a trip to South Africa which includes Kruger National Park for November…. The first stop was – you guessed it a stop at the government…
We departed the hotel at 08:00 to visit a jade factory… It was interesting to learn about jade, but I would have preferred to see more of Xi’an instead. Picture below is of one of the engravers making one of the family balls (multiple layers inside each other) After the government shopping…
Before the bus departed I walked from the hotel to the river to take a few pictures. Because we were on the north side of the river the sun was creating too much haze to take any great photos. I did get a few nice photos of the hotel in Wuhan. Picture of the…
The stop in the morning was at a scenic spot called the water village. We took a nice walk along the river and into a gorge to a beautiful waterfall. We also saw a few macau monkeys with babies. During lunch the ship moved to a location near the 3 Gorges Dam….
This morning the scenery was wonderful. I captured a timelapse video from my balcony with my GoPro. I’ll probably have to wait until I leave China to upload the video to YouTube. Below picture is on the Yangtze River before arriving at Godess Stream. At 09:00 we took a small boat to a scenic…
This morning we stopped at the town named Shibaozhai which has a red pagoda. The entire town was demolished and a new town was built at a higher elevation due to the higher river levels because of the dam. A wall was built around the pagoda to prevent it from being destroyed by the river. It…
We left the river cruise boat in Fengdu at around 08:00 and took the bus to Chongqing. The first stop was for lunch once we arrived in Chongqing and then we had a bit of free time where I took out $ from the ATM and we visited a nice square where the 3 gorges…
Here is the tour operator’s planned schedule: Breakfast at hotel 11:00 Lunch at hotel, leave checked bags in lobby to be loaded on bus 12:00 Depart hotel for Chongqing airport 15:20 Flight from Chongqing to Shanghai 18:00 Arrive at Shanghai airport Then bus to restaurant (table service which would take an hour) and bus…
Last day of the guided tour. We left the hotel at 8:30 and went directly to the bund (waterfront) in front of the customs house. I took some pictures, but the sun was coming from behind the Oriental Pearl Tower, so I am not sure they will come out very good. The lighting for…
This morning (June 5th) the transfer to the airport was scheduled for 11:30, which did not give me much of an opportunity to explore, so I had breakfast at the hotel (best breakfast I had at a hotel) and did some work on my photos, videos and book keeping (accounting). I chatted with a few…