Yangtze River Cruise to Shibaozhai Pagoda, China (Saturday, August 25th, 2018)

We slept on our ship last night, and it set sail this morning down the Yangtze.

As we made our way along the river we enjoyed some Ti Chi on the sun deck with our instructor Bruce Lee.

As we made our way down the river, we saw some of the strangest things.

 And some other cruise ships.

A truck ferry and hotel all in one.

I couldn't figure out what these things were on the side of the hill.

I tuned out that they were graves.  Interesting!

 Fishermen.

 On our way to the pagoda, we got a tour of the bridge.  Another perk of sailing with Gate-1.

 

They use three different types of GPS.

 

When we dock next to another boat, there isn't a lot of room in between.

Our main destination today was the Shibaozhai, a pagoda built during the Ming Dynasty.  This 12-story pagoda was built into the side if a cliff face, rising almost 100 feet high, and was constructed without any nails.  

We had about a 10 minute walk from the ship to the pagoda, weaving through the vendors as we went.

The pagoda is on an island (sometimes), so the only way to get there is across a very rickety suspended bridge.

 

Our first glimpse of the pagoda.

 This pagoda has 99 stairs to get from the first floor to the ninth floor, which is as high as you can go.

Beautiful views from the Pagoda.

We climbed up one side of the pagoda, and then hiked back down the other side to get back out.

The bridge we crossed to get to the pagoda.

 Aww, look how pretty our room was decorated when we got back.

 

 We're really enjoying our time on the river cruise so far.  The climb to the pagoda and the views were amazing today.  We're looking forward to seeing what's next