05: Yangtze River Cruise, Day 2

There is no included excursion until this afternoon, and we don’t fancy the additional one with Herbert, so we have a morning of rest after breakfast today. For the first time we eat in our exclusive Deck 5 restaurant for the buffet breakfast at seven-thirty. After this Elaine has her massages at nine-twenty and I’m going to watch the film about the Great Dam (Three Gorges Dam) at nine o’clock that is showing in the bar. There was a good selection of choices for the breakfast, which was all the more enjoyable for being in the smaller and more intimate restaurant. The documentary

about the dam was very interesting, not least of all because we were going to visit it this afternoon, and Elaine really enjoyed her double massage! So, all in all a most enjoyable and restful morning aboard MS Yangtze Gold II.

Unbelievably, after just a little time relaxing, it was lunch time already; and we can’t wait too long to go as we need to be ready and waiting by ten to two for our excursion. Our first lunch on board, and the choices were many and varied, no problem topping up our tanks with this selection.

Like all good British boys and girls we’re all ready and waiting on time to be picked up for our afternoon tour to the nearby Three Gorges Dam. I hadn’t realised it but we could actually see the rear of it from where our cruiser was moored! The

weather was not as humid as yesterday but it was still overcast with apparently no chance of rain... heard that one before, ehh Michael Fish...!!!

This amazing dam is the largest hydroelectric dam in the world... at this time, and I believe that it was being visited by the largest group of Chinese tourists in the world. The place was heaving, as one of our group asked - “Doesn’t anyone work here”, meaning the tourists, not the site staff! It’s a massive feat of human engineering ability, and interested to learn that the very first dam of this type (though on a very much smaller scale) was in fact designed and built in England as a private venture.

On our return to the boat we had some time to kill before

dinner, so a little more R&R was the order of the day, Elaine with her book and me with this blog. Dinner was now buffet style, we only had table service for our first night, and just to add to the experience, we had now weighed anchor and started cruising at last. If anything tonight’s food was even better than last night’s meal, and to have desserts two nights running was just too exciting...!!! Even more exciting was the fact that we were going to the movies after our post dinner coffees, to see none other than “National Treasure” with Nicholas Cage & Diane Kruger, very much one of our favourite films. There were only four of our group watching it with us, plus just three Chinese reading their subtitles. After the film and a quick e-mail check for Elaine, it was straight off to bed, as there was an earlyish start at 08:15 tomorrow for our excursion up the much narrower Shennong River.