Karl’s Korner

Good afternoon, friends and family,
Yes, we are in the beautiful and modern city of Dalian, China - what a place this is! So many high rises and modern style tall, tall and taller buildings reaching into the sky. All the smaller, older buildings are being torn down and replaced with these glass and steel modern edifices.
I think the Chinese are putting OUR money to work the correct way - putting people to work building a better country. Perhaps we can learn something from them…
We rode the bus into the city center and walked again for about 2 hours, until our legs were worn. We visited an alley market that ran for several blocks, more food and types than we could count…quite an interesting place, but not one where I would buy my food…
We took several pictures of the main square, which is a circle, but go figure…LOL Very pretty, surrounded with so many tall, beautiful buildings, which it seems I can’t stop talking about.
We are all packed except for the clothes we are wearing - we get off the ship at 0630 and head for Marriot City Wall Hotel in the center of Beijing. We are really looking forward to this portion of the trip, knowing we’ll get to see the Great Wall and other places we’ve only read about in books.
I have to settle my account with the ship for my books and get paid off as soon as we set sail.
My camera has been working wonderfully, and on the spur of the moment, I decided to take some pictures of all the food in the buffet - well, it was good that I did, as after about 10 shots, the camera indicated my batteries has expired! So, now I can get new ones for the next three days. I had just told Carol that I was worried such a thing would happen when we got to the wall and I wouldn’t get any pictures. Now we will!
I think we will owe the boat less than $200 for the entire trip, as we only took one tour and didn’t drink anything except for two bottles of wine at dinner on two separate occasions. The only thing we had to drink other than that was a glass of wine the other night…coke has been our big expense!
We are both tired today and not being able to get our usual 8-10 hours sleep tonight will wear us donw more, but we will hang in there to see China.
We hope you’ve enjoyed the entries to my blog - sorry about posting the same thing three times last time…this computer just isn’t very fast.
So, we’ll say “so long” for now and hope we can add something from the hotel. We’ve enjoyed the cruise, but we are ready to get off the ship and come home. See you all in Rockport shortly. God bless!
Until next time,
Via con Dias, our friends and family,
Karl & Carol