Made it through another adventure

  Yichang, Hubei, China
Tuesday, July 22, 2008

We were woken up early the next morning (as usual on this boat) to see the second and third gorges. The second gorge, called the Wu Gorge, is famous for its misty peaks.

Mists on Wu Gorge

 It was certainly misty, especially because it was raining. I went out to see it, but I think that Jaydee and Rachel were more interested in sleeping. The Third gorge, Xiling Gorge, used to be known for fast currents, and dangerous rapids that were hard to navigate. After the water level rose, there are no longer rapids. 

The Famous Fast Noodles

We opted out of seeing the Three Gorge damn later that day, much to the disbelief of our tour guide. We were told about three times that this is a very famous dam, the biggest in the world, etc, and each time we politely declined. It was if she thought we did not know what we were passing up. We did.  
We made it to the bus to Yichang city, were it seems we are the only foreigners. One of our Chinese friends had written the name of our hotel in Mandarin and we showed that to the taxi driver. Fortunately, we got to the right place and checked in. We were so excited to see our room - very big we thought. In the evening we ventured down the street from our hotel for dinner. We were prepared to just point to something and see what we got (since not much English is spoken here and all food seems to be delicious anyways), but the waitress actually spoke English and was very friendly. She took us to where the food was displayed so that we could point at things that looked good and suggested that we have the dumplings, showing us that the best way to eat them was by dipping them in vinegar first. It was all delicious, as usual, and we were grateful for a real meal after a diet of fast noodles on the boat. After a good night sleep, free of hearing Chinese Karaoke from above us, we are getting ready to head to the airport. Our next stop is Beijing and our plane gets in around 7 pm tonight. More later!