Ups and Downs of October Holiday

Well, we are back from the October holiday travel!!
We took a bus to Shanghai Saturday night and flew to Chongqing on Sunday. Monday was a day for visiting the Panda Zoo and checking out the city. By the day's end, we were pretty foot weary, but we had to be at the agent's office by 5:00 to go to the boat.
It was after 6:00 by the time we were sent off in the van. Upon arriving at the destination, it was quite an experience getting all the details arranged for the trip and there were more expenses to pay (we found this was quite a regular occurence at every turn). All these little men kept trying to get our luggage to carry it for us (they had a pole across their shoulders and wide pans hanging down on each side). We had to keep a close eye on everything. By the time we had walked all the way to the boat, we were wishing we had let them carry them. After walking about a mile, we finally arrived at the boat. The other four ladies (fellow teachers) had a four-bunk room on the third deck, and Jim and I had a 2-bed room to ourselves on the fourth deck.
We were about to begin an exciting adventure.
I'll try to post about the cruise with pics tomorrow. Time for bed now.