1071. China - # 4 - Cruise on the Yangtze River, with beautiful scenery!

One of the highlights of the China Tour was the 4 day cruise on the Yangtze River!  I'll post pictures and tell about them.

 

  Our first breakfast on the cruise ship.  There was always watermelon, hard boiled eggs, various veges and dumplings.The white fruit with black dots was "Dragon fruit", quite tasty!

 We saw many other ships also on the very large Yangtze River.  The River, I believe, is about 300 meters deep -- and looks a sort of grey green.  Sadly we saw debris floating on it, in places.

 In this picture you can see some terraces, which were farmed.

 This ship was much larger than ours, and more houses on shore.

 A lunch, always rice available, and various veges etc.  Spicy!

 One off shore excursion included being taught about the Three Gorges Dam, which is the largest dam in the world, producing enormous amounts of electricity, which supply many cities with power.  Below is a picture of it, but we didn't see it ourselves.

    On one off shore ride we visited a hilltop, with a beautiful fountain.  And I did take the picture which shows docks that ships have to go through.  You can see a bridge over the river in the background.  We saw several bridges on the river.  In a park was this beautiful bamboo small forest.

 This was showing some ruins, which were abandoned years ago, on the side of the river. Someone is living on a steep mountain on the side of the river.  More buildings on the side of the river.  Those who live here do a type of farming -- raising fruit trees, etc.  I'm not sure what ?

 

 

This was a spot in the river, where more people live, but still isolated.In the center, you can see farming terraces on the mountain.

The high mountains in the three gorges were just beautiful! This small home looked interesting, and also one about half way up the mountain.  You can see poles with electric power.

One day it was raining a lot, and I went up on the top deck in the cruise ship, and loved taking pictures!  I loved seeing the clouds in front of the mountains!

 

Our ship captain talking, on the deck in the rain!

A small pagoda on the mountain, with steps going up to it.  Other pagodas up in the mountains. Looking closely you can see 2 pagodas, center, and right on the bottom. 

 

 

  

  You can see various places on the mountain that are farmed. Beautiful scenes in the rain.  I believe the white things on the pictures was rain on my camera!  I took these in rain, and got rather soaked!Another bridge over the river, and roads somewhere up there!

         

The sign went with the dessert above!  I tried it, and it was a sort of sweet soupy jello.  I was curious!

This was a decoration on the buffet table, beautiful!

 More people living on the mountains, and farms, trees, etc.

 You can see a road that leads almost to the river -- ?  The main place people can live in their own house is in the farming areas.  In the cities almost everyone lives in a high rise apartment building, as there isn't room to build private homes, and it would cost too much also.Another beautiful scene on the side of the Yangtze River!

 One excursion was to this Red Pagoda, on a very rainy day.  I was quite tired, and only took a picture from the ship.  For a day or two my stomach didn't like the spicy food, so I was more careful and ate more of the bland foods!  
    You can see a highway on the side of the mountain.  But the highway didn't go all the way through the gorge, because of the steep mountains.

We were on the ship 4 nights, with musical programs 3 of the nights.  One night the couple below wanted to have a picture taken with me.  He was a math teacher, and they were sweet!

The handsome Chinese young man was our waiter each meal!

And the lovely young lady was our waitress, cleaned off dishes. 

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We got off at Chongqing, a city of 32 million, which I will tell of next.  There we went to a zoo where they had live panda bears!