The next day the 20th June we caught an all day train from Xi’an to Yichang – the starting point for our Yangtze cruise. We left at 8.50 and got to the Ramada at Yichang at 1am. We haggled for a taxi and got to the hotel at 1.30am. The internet being very hit and miss when I was booking hotels sometimes it worked and sometimes I had to repeat the steps. The receptionist said to us that we had booked a small bed. I didn’t know what she meant until Maurice spotted that I had only put 1 adult in the booking and therefore it was 1 single bed. They were lovely and upgraded us without any penalty so we stayed in a luxurious room and relaxed, had a leisurely bath and Maurice did a bit of ironing. The ironing board was made for midgets so he had to kneel to do it.
We could board the river boat after 6pm and we happened on our first woman taxi driver. She took a back way over many potholes and only dropped us at the top of the road to the boat. It was pouring with rain and we were very wet by the time we boarded the boat.
I must say that I am very happy with my little Nokia N9 with its 8mexapixel camera. All of the shots from the train were at speed and through not very clean windows.