Yantai

Today's guide tells us Yantai is a small Chinese city - only seven million people!

Luckily we didn't see all of them - only a million or so.

Our excursion was another of those "looks good on paper" ones but in reality wasn't that great and mostly because of the sheer number of people at the place we visited.

I heard someone say that this is the first time Seabourn has stopped at this port and the people (most of them) seemed really happy that we were here. The was a huge troupe of drummers were here to welcome us and all the tour buses were lined up waiting for us to board.

The immigration officials, however, were a different story. It looked at first as if it would take hours to get everyone off the ship as they checked the guest list in great detail and inspected each and ever passport very thouroughly. After a while the captain of our ship went out and (I assume) laid down the law and we were then all allowed to get off the ship quickly.

They probably don't get many tourist ships here and the immigration people were probably just thrilled to have something to do for a change.

So just a couple pics of the place we went.

Don't recall what the heck this was - it looked nice tho'.

This was interesting - a solid carving of dragons and stuff - the Chinese seem to believe in the existence of dragons - and who's going to tell them otherwise.

On the way back to the ship we stop at the "beach". The fog has returned and it's not beach weather at all. I'm sure this would be a great promenade on a nice day but not today.

And I guess a city of 7 million needs a few sky scrapers too.

On the way back to the ship our guide said she would sing to us. Great! So she sang a song that many of us sang in Sunday school so many years ago (and I wish I had made a video of this). The song was Jesus Loves Me This I Know (for the bible tells me so)...anyone remember that one? Click here for a refresher.

Anyway, it was, in my twisted opinion, hilarious - instead of Jesus she pronounced it Jeezers. Jeezers loves me this I know....

I'll probably go to hell for this.

Back at the ship:

This is a huge port and all the little white things are cars, built here and being shipped somewhere. The whole time we were here one car-hauler after another arrived delivering newly built cars. By the time we left he entire dock was almost full

And the loading cranes are massive. Check out the picture below and the car hauler that I've outlined with a red oval. It'll give an idea of just how huge they are.

Truly amazing!

That's it for Yantai.