The sight seeing tunnel experience
The Pearl Tower
A small portion of the crowd waiting to go up in the tower
Views from the Pearl Tower
We woke up at 7 as we were pulling into the pier. It was 63 degrees under mostly clear skies. We ordered coffee and dressed as the sun came out brightly. We went to breakfast at 8:30 and left the ship at 9:45 aboard the shuttle bus. It was only about a 15 minute ride and we walked about 25 minutes across the river bridge to the Bund. We walked along the Bund to the entrance to the sight seeing runnel and rode across to the Pearl Tower at 11:30. We bought tickets for the viewing area and got in line for over 1 1/2 hours to get to the elevator which took us part way and then we had to take another elevator on up to our destination. We walked around it and took some pictures. Thea went to the transparent level and took some pictures looking straight down. Then at 2:15, we started to try to find the way to the down elevator. We had to go down a flight of stairs and then they sent us back up to the original level to catch an elevator down to the bottom. But we had yet another set of stairs to descend. We got out of the tower about 2:45 and caught a cab back to the pier where we still had to walk a good ways to the ships and all past the Volendam to get to the Amsterdam. We re-boarded at 3:25 and Glenda went to the aft deck with a cup of coffee and Thea and I went back to the cabin where I updated the blog for yesterday and downloaded today's pictures. At 5, we started to get ready but we didn't have hot water in the shower. It was warm, but not really hot so we made do. We went to the aft deck to see the lights at 6 and then to deck 9 to get a different view. Manny came out and took pictures of us against the lights of the river. Then we went to the Crow's Nest and Thea got to meet John and Kathryn who had just returned from their overland tour. After dinner, we went to the Chinese Acrobat show at 9:30 and got to the cabin at 10:30. I will make this a 3 part post with the day pictures in part 1, the night pictures in part 2 and the show pictures as part 3.
