Our Last Group Outing in Chongqing

Cathy needed a break from the blog tonight so I am substituting for her this evening. Today was our last group outing in Chongqing. This morning we all gathered in the lobby and departed for Eling Park. Eling Park is the highest point in the city with some spectacular views of Chongqing. Unfortunately, it was rainy and overcast and visibility was very poor. I was very disappointed because Chongqing is absolutely enormous. I wanted to see it from that vantage point because it is high rise after high rise with many more under construction. Our tour guide calls the city a "concrete forest" because of all the high rises. They go on for as far as you can see and truly is hard to comprehend--think Chicago downtown times 1000. Despite the rain the outing in the park was very interesting. It was very pretty and had some neat landmark's. Mao had a house in the park where he held up during World War II and there was a neat museum. The museum outlined the Three Gorges project, which is a huge damn, that is displacing approximately 1.3 million people. After an hour or so the kids let us know that it was time to head back to our hotel so off we went.

We returned to the hotel and spent a quiet afternoon hanging out in the hotel. We got take out from an italian restaurant and Maeve and I took a nice walk in the garden on the 10th floor. We all also were able to sneak in naps.

It has been a long week here in Chongqing so we decided to invite all the families and our guides to a pizza party in our room. We ran down to the Pizza Hut, which is right next to the Starbuck's, and brought some pizzas back to our room. It was a great way to spend the evening. We all needed to socialize and blow off a little steam. Many of us have been so focused on adjusting to our children that it was nice to really spend time with other adults having fun. It really turned out well and we were all able to share our progress this week.

Well tomorrow is our last day in Chongqing and I think all the families are ready to move on to the next leg of our journey. We have all heard of the great experiences that people have in Guongzhou and the White Swan and we are all looking forward to it. I think Cathy is excited about the shopping.

If you would like to view more pictures of our experience in China please click on the link in the upper right corner entitled, "More China Pictures" and then select, "China Day 7."