anyone else on the 8/6 Yangtze River cruise?

[smeyer418]

IMO you should at least once on this tour leave the group and go off on your own. We did that in Beijing(my wife had downloaded the 10 best resturants in Beijing) and had a n absolutely wonderful meal at a minimal cost....it was the night the group went to the Peking Opera....which I had seen once in NY...once was more than enough(the tour guide agreed with us and told us that the meal that night was not going to be the best anyway- he said it would be ok...some of the other meals were great)...The Xian warrier noodle soup was great :)

[new_cruiser]

I agree with smeyer. You get a wonderful experience by going out on your own. Ask the front desk for "hotel card" that has the address of your hotel on it. You can show that to a taxi driver to get back.

 

Intrepid does their trips differently. The trip leader travels with the group and makes the meal and guide arrangements himself. It provided a nice flexibility. For instance, our group dinner in Chengdu was to be the evening we arrived. But none of us were very hungry since we had had a light meal on the plane. The next morning was an early wake-up to go see the Pandas. So we asked Mark, our trip leader, if the dinner could be moved to the next night and he did.

 

On our trip about half the lunches and dinners were included. The other half were chances to get out on our own or we could tag along with Mark to where he was going. Our meals on our own were usually between $1 (e.g. meals in night markets or noodle shops)-$4 (restraunt meals with several dishes) US.