April 12, 13, 14, Shanghai, China Cruise segment

April 12, 2015 Sunday, Shanghai

Shanghai skyline

Cool sculpture we pass every time we leave the pier.  the building is a shipping company.

David and I did Shanghai Delight excursion before our ship left the harbor at 1:00PM.  

Entrance foyer to museum

We visited the Shanghai museum in People's Square which is full of a huge array of Asian art and artifacts.  Spectacular building as well.

Very old Axe in the museum

These vases looked luminescent in the light from the beauty of the stone.

Cool pot

Famous vase

famous ceramic figure

model of chinese boats.  They are not that old, but they were cool boats.

Beautiful old  jade sculpture

A famous chinese chair.

Living wall.  These lined the side of a waterway and promenade.  Beautiful.

Before we visited the Yu garden, we saw a long long line outside the area.  Our guide said the people were going to visit the Taoist temple.  This was a special day once a year.  Everyone we saw exiting the temple, which was right by the garden entrance, had a package of "long life" noodles.

The Yu Garden was next to the tea house David visited the day before on his own.  It reminded us of the Chinese garden in Portland, OR that we love so well, but of course this is in China! 

 It is much much larger.  The rock formations are the main focus of the gardens.  But we also enjoyed the spring flowering trees.  

Cherry blossoms and other blossoms in the garden of rocks and water.

Entry way.  A photo of this is on the brochure

We had some time afterwards to wander the traditional market area before returning to the ship.

Street of the market

We ate his stick of fish balls

Colorful souvenirs

Elephant statue famous in this market.

She is making dim sum dumplings

Shanghai skyline

We departed this dynamic city at 1:00pm

Shanghai skyline

April 13, 2015, Monday, a sea day on the Yellow Sea.  It was chilly.  John and I had a good bridge game today.  We got and 85% game!  Kay and Darwin had never heard of it, nor had we.  She said we didn't even have all tops.

April 14, 2015, Tuesday  

We arrived in Tianjin harbor, 3 hours drive from Beijing, at 11:00am.  We had heard that others were able to drive to Beijing to see the Forbidden City and Tienemen Square, staying at a hotel and then meeting up with the Around the World cruisers at the Great Wall.  There was no real advertisement about this overnight excursion.  We checked at Destination Services at 8:30am to see if we could go.  Then we packed, just in case.  We got the go ahead at 10:30am and the bus left at 11:30.  

We had a 3 hour bus drive in the most cramped bus so far.  Almost every seat was taken.  32 of us.  We had one stop before arriving in the huge city of Beijing.  There are now 6 major ring roads.  When I was there in 2000, the 5th ring road was barely under construction.  There was a circle of construction cranes in that area.  Now there is construction for the 7th, but as we passed by, it seemed that there was still room in some of the many many high rise apartments.  As we got closer to the city center, the traffic got heavier and heavier.  We finally arrived at our hotel, the Regent Hotel.  I thought the hotel in Xian was lavish.  This one was even more amazing.  We were on the 19th floor, near the palace suite.  We had dinner with Alan and Becky in the Chinese restaurant at the hotel.  David had shark fin soup, and I had bird's nest soup.  Then we got some preserved meat rice dish which was the specialty, but was very dense and salty. We also got sweet and sour chicken and bok choy.  The soups were delicious.  Mine was gelatinous.  I don't know if it was a real bird's nest or not, but it was priced like it was.  We enjoyed the beautiful hotel room and the incredible bathroom.