September 19 (Saturday) – Yangtze River

When we woke this morning we were docked at Fengdu. Because of the flooding behind the dam the city was rebuilt higher up the mountain and everyone moved 3 or 4 years ago. There were 170 steps up to the city. When the reservoir is full more than half of those steps will be under water.














We took a bus ride to the Snowy Jade Cave where the formations in the cave were very white (hence the name) and beautiful.






















The afternoon was aboard ship and we attended a demonstration of how they paint the inside of crystal bottles and how to tell the difference between the real crystal bottles and the fake ones. I also watched part of a scarf tying demonstration and then Paul and I took some Mahjong lessons…sort of a card game with tiles.

The evening show was put on by staff from the various departments throughout the ship (including the chefs). It was definitely amateur night but some of it was very good and it was all in good fun.
The pea soup fog/smog was with us all day today. It did start raining hard so hopefully it will clear the air some…or we’ll just have a rainy day tomorrow.