Dam, Dam, Dam

After a quick breakfast on the boat, we disembarked for the last time. Leaving the boat was a lot smoother than boarding. We hired porters to take our bags off the boat and get them delivered to our assigned bus. It worked much better than trying to schlep all of our luggage ourselves.

The local guide had the responsibility to give us a tour of the Three Gorges Dam project. It's a huge project - according to the guide, the largest project in the world. The dam is huge, but it was hard to appreciate the size. You can't get an appreciation of the size of it given the perspective of the viewing platforms. It's not like the Hoover Dam where you get to see a huge dam face. The locks were quite impressive though - it's a 5 stage lock which takes 3 - 4 hours to get through. We didn't go through in the boat because it was under maintenance. This dam also has an elevaator for smaller boats.

After the dam tour, we were loaded back on the bus to get to Yichang. We didn't have any planned activities in Yichang - we were just booked on a flight from there to Shanghai. Well, after lunch (Chinese food agagin) our guide suggested a visit to a Chinese minority folk art museum. It was really interesting - the ladies were using silk thread to make wall art - so it was basically another opportunity to shop and spend money... AND several of us took advantage of the 'opportunity'! :)

We got to the airport and were too early to check in so we got some coffee and waited about an hour. We finally got checked in and then our flight was delayed. It was an hour later than scheduled, so it wasn't too bad. We found a comfortable place in the airport to wait. It was a small coffee/tea place with a few food options so we had some tea and dumplings for dinner.

We finally arrived in Shanghai at about 9 pm. We met our Shyanghai guide (Jimmy) and got to the hotel by about 10:30. Check in was smooth - the rooms all have a smoke smell, but it's not too overwhelming.