Monday, June 13
(The downside of travel in China is no google. Now that I"m in Japan I'm catching up on my blog by retyping my handwritten journal.)
We woke early, had a cup of coffee and said goodbye to our home. It was sad. From very early on our apartment has truly felt like home. I remember just a week or two after moving to Taiwan, we came back to the apartment after a shopping trip. When we walked in the door I was hit by how comforting and safe our home felt. It was so easy to fall in love with living here. I'm happy to be coming back to Simsbury and starting the next adventure, but it's sad too, to be leaving this place.

So we left. An early morning taxi ride to the airport and a quick flight to Xiamen, China. It's easy to make comparisons between China and Taiwan and usually, in my opinion, Taiwan comes out on top. I can do without going to Xiamen again. It was a perfectly serviceable airport but all we were doing was transferring to another flight. It was a good thing we had a two hour layover.

Part of the problem was over that our luggage was overweight. In China each person is only allowed 20 kg and we were just a bit above that. We usually travel on the lighter side but we've got two months of travel/homelessness ahead of us so we (and by we I mean I) packed more than I would normally. Anyway, we paid the extra money for the first flight but the ticket agent in Xiamen didn't seem to like that solution and encouraged us to take the smallest suitcase as carry-on. That was fine for size - I've often used the bag as carry-on - but it meant going through security and boy were they thorough. They took the suntan lotion but let me keep the Hello Kitty scissors I won at the night market the night before. Note to self: Think first before impetulously switching a checked luggage bag to carry-on.

Chongqing: We arrived at the airport with time to kill before we could board our cruise ship so our guide took us on a tour of the city. It's the biggest city in China, both by population (32 million) and area.

We drove an hour to the other side of the city to see the pandas at the zoo.

Then we drove to the center of the city where the two rivers come together and hung out for awhile. It was nice to sit with a cu of coffee in the air conditioned Starbucks for awhile to recharge after a day of travel.

We were on the boat by 6:30 m and I'd packed and reorganized by 7:30. We sent the evening wandering the ship, enjoying the view of the city lights and hanging out on our balcony. The boat holds 400 or so passengers and 150 crew but we're not quite in the tourist season yet so the ship's pretty empty with only 150 passengers. Yeah for us. One crew per passenger should mean fabulous service, right?