Yangtze River - Day One. Getting to Chongching

We couldn't leave until David had taught his two classes this morning. He let his class out about ten minutes early, hurried home, grabbed our packed bags, and climbed into the taxi Eva had ordered for us to take to the airport.  We didn't have a lot of time as it takes 45 minutes to an hour to get to the airport, depending on traffic, and our flight was scheduled to leave at 1:50 p.m.  The driver got us there at 1 p.m., we got our tickets, and had time to sit for about 10 minutes before they started loading the plane.

When we arrived at the Chongching airport, we didn't see a sign for BYU, so we tried to contact Marvin, the tour guide, to see what to do.  After a minute or two of standing there, one of the concierges came up with "BYU" on her phone screen.  She walked us through the airport to the parking garage and put us in a Didi taxi.  They are taxis that you hire when you want a little more upscale ride. Unfortunately, we had arrived at the start of drive time, so it took almost an hour to get to the restaurant where we were meeting the other in our group before boarding the cruise boat.

As we got close to the river and the driver was trying to maneuver through the slow traffic, a man in a yellow striped shirt was trying to talk to our driver through the window of the taxi.  The taxi driver ignored him, thinking he was one of the hawkers who were trying to get people to ride on their boats. It turned out, he was looking for us.  I guess the driver didn't understand he would be looking for us, because he just drove us to the hotel where we were to eat dinner and told us to go inside.

We walked inside and were basically ignored by the  man behind the desk.  When a woman who was sitting on the lobby called to the man, he finally indicated that we should take the elevator.  Inside the elevator, there are three buttons to push; 3, -2, -3.  We step back out and try to ask which button to push.  She asks the man and he said, "san," which is three in Chinese.  We tried to get clarification on up or down and the woman said down.  So, down we went.

Down let to a parking garage.  We were to be met by another driver down there? Where were we supposed to go?  I'm not leaving the safety of the elevator area without know where we are supposed to go.  After a few minutes of watching other people enter and leave the area, we decided we were NOT in the right place and we were going back up.  The elevator looked like it was going to come down to us, but would stop and go back up.  It did this about three times.  We didn't know where the stairs might be to go up, so we just kept waiting, hoping that someone would come down like we had, and then we could get back on the elevator and go up.

We called Marvin while we were in the elevator and he said to go UP to the third floor.  There we met the guide who was in the yellow and black striped shirt and had our dinner.  He looked rather relieved that we had gotten there.

Living on the Yangtze River.

We quickly at our meal and then they loaded us up in a bus and drove a short distance to the harbor.  It was about a fifteen minutes walk from the dock to the boat, so the guide suggested that we hire a porter to take our suitcases to the boat.  There were a lot of stairs to go down, so this was easier.

This building in the center is rather unusual looking in the day, but add the lights of the night and it really looks amazing!

A better close-up of that building.  The colors are constantly changing with different patters.  I don't think we saw any pattern the same during the time we were watching it.

After getting settled in our rooms, we went for a walk on the deck and watched the lights of the city come on.  There were boats that had dinner cruises going up and down the river and they were all lit up. It was fun to see.   When we left Jinan the temperature was in the 30's.  When we arrived in Chongching it was in the 80's.  We didn't stay up too long because we were tired, so we went to our room, got showers and went to bed.

Two of the river boats dinner cruise ships all lit up.