Arrival in Chongping Busy day ahead

We disembark at 8am and take a bus to see the Flying Tiger museum and General Stillwells home and headquarters. I found this museum fascinating. There was so much history that I forgot. One particular fact was the Chinese citizens participation in saving downed American pilots. According to the documents 95% of pilots that were downed were brought to safety by the Chinese citizens

Next stop the Chongping Zoo. This has the largest panda population in China at this zoo. We did. It have time to walk around but we're able to see the baby pandas that are only out 1 hour a day. I have some great video of the pandas that I can bore you with when we are home

From the zoo to the airport, which is a zoo in itself. We fly to Xi'an. This is the town that uncovered the Terra Cotta Warriors in 1976. Xi'an is surrounded with a city wall that has been rebuilt like many of China's palaces and temples. We are able to walk on the wall and climb the 3 flights of steps to get to the top of the wall  

Time to mention a few things about flying with a group. There are definitely pluses. Your luggage is picked up outside of your room about 1 hour prior to leaving for the airport. The person checking in all the bags also gets all the boarding passes. It is getting harder and harder to stay under the 44 pounds with all the new accumulated treasures. We have already sent 2 boxes home which means the treasures cost more than we thought. The down side of group travel is, we are a group and handing out boarding passes and passports is a pain. We usually get to the airport and through security 10 minutes before boarding so no long waits. On all of our flights in China, even the 1 hour ones, they feed you a meal. Yes it does fit the description of airplane food so ediblity is questionable

On arrival all the bags are taken off the baggage carousel at the destination and automatically transferred to the hotel and delivered to the room. Additionally on this trip there was no charge for people who were overweight on the baggage. It was just worked out with the airline.  It is nice to have someone work out all the details it is just the group movement that makes me a little crazy.