Disembark the Yangtze River cruise in Chongqing -> Stilwell Museum -> Three Gorges Museum -> airport -> Flight from Chongqing to Xian Weather: Chongqing – rain and overcast and 54-63*, Xian – sunny and 66*
We get up at 6:15 and have our luggage packed and outside the door by 7:00. We go down and have our last breakfast on the ship. We disembark. It is raining. We get on a bus and go to see the Stilwell Museum, walking up the hill in the rain to the renovated former residence of General Stilwell – who helped the Chinese win the War of Resistance against the Japanese invaders.
We walk down the hill and meet the bus, which takes us next to visit the Three Gorges Museum. It is a very large museum with all kinds of different displays about Chinese culture. It has the name because the building is built to look like the Dam with water flowing out. We have time to only visit the first and third floors. Frank started to tell us about the displays and the guard stops him. They no longer allow private tour guides to explain things. Supposedly someone explained things in a way they didn’t approve of so they no longer allow it. Thus we continue on our own, making the best of the displays not knowing Chinese. We see a lot of Chinese history.
We leave the museum going past this large building in the park to our set meeting place, ‘KFC’, to get on the bus to take us to the airport. Our flight is at 11:45 and it takes 1 1/2 hours to get to Xian. Once we are there we take another bus to our hotel – Novotel.
After checking into our room on the 12th floor, we walk to the mall and eat in a Cantonese restaurant. We order three different dishes – pork dumplings, shrimp wrapped in large noodles, and a vegetarian noodle dish. All are very tasty. They only have chopsticks so I have a crash lesson in using them. After dinner we went to Dairy Queen and I have a mango parfait!
The end of another interesting day packed with activities and new experiences. We go to bed by 9 because tomorrow is another really full day.