Yangtze River Cruise

We decided to do the river cruise instead of the standard Beijing. Mostly because we were going to be in Wuhan and that is where the river cruise ends. We are so glad we did.
We flew from Dallas to LA and then from LA to Guangzhou. From Guangzhou we flew on to Chongqing where the cruise started. We arrived in Chongqing around 10:00am and was met by a guide. we could not board the cruise till 6:00pm so we thought we would tour the city for a couple of hours. Now for the honest part. Not sure if it was all of the travel time, the fact that I HATED our tour guide or culture shock, but I HATED Chongqing. It was rainy when we arrived and the city was very overcast and very dirty. all I could think about was thank God we were taking Kai from this horrible place. After a couple of visits to some tourist trap, high pressure sales type places we finally told our guide that we would skip dinner and board the cruise a little early. She was not very happy. She took us to the area where our boat was docked. We were greeted by men begging to help with our bags. I was horrified and told Sean to not let our bags out of our site. a good guide would have told them to leave us alone, but not our Chongqing guide. She allowed them to baggier us and follow us all the way to the boat where the staff of the cruise finally helped us with our bags. I was almost in tears and was so sad that I had this horrible feeling about my daughters birth country.
The nest 4 days were WONDERFUL! We loved the cruise. We met some great people and would not trade that experience for anything. The boat itself was supposed to be a 5 star. I would say it was more like a very nice 3+. It was very clean with very small but adequate rooms. But most of all the scenery was wonderful. The food was pretty good and the staff was always so helpful. I would recommend this cruise for anyone. Just know it is not a plush Caribbean style cruise. It is a very clean Yangtze river cruise with amazing views and wonderful people.
I will add more on this later, but by the time I left China I had fallen in love with my daughters birth country and was so very sad to leave. It is hard to explain, but I will always have such a love for the Chinese people and that beautiful country!
If any of you getting ready to travel have any questions please feel free to leave a commit or email me. I will post pictures when I can get them down loaded.