15-Day China Tour and Yangtze River Cruise from $2,499

11-12-2012

Or $166 per Day for Everything

 

Bellevue, WA, Novembeer 12,  2012—Forget expensive air fares to Europe and pricey Caribbean hotels.  The best (and most interesting) deal around is China Spree’s 15-day Mighty Yangtze tour/cruise vacation.  It includes not only trans-Pacific air and a tour of Beijing, Xian, Chengdu, Chongqing, Suzhou, Tongli and Shanghai, but also a 3-night Yangtze River cruise aboard  the deluxe Victoria Katarina.  China Spree, the company known for first-class travel at bargain prices, is offering this Special for only $2,499 in March and November, 2013.  Of course, the price rises for spring and summer departures, and it’s always $60 higher from Los Angeles and $100 from New York.

 

All shore excursions are included in the 3-night downstream Yangtze River cruise, which provides outside cabins with private balconies on Victoria Cruises’ premier ship, the Katarina.  Sailing down the river is a memorable experience.  The views are fantastic, with the misty peaks, sheer cliffs and rugged canyons of the  three gorges recalling the scenery on Chinese painted scrolls.  The ship also transits the world’s largest ship lock before stopping at the site of the Three Gorges Dam, modern China’s most ambitious engineering project. 

 

The cruise, however, is only part of the story.  In Imperial Beijing the tour visits the legendary Great Wall of China, the 9,999-room palace called the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace gardens. In the dynastic capital, Xian, the big attraction is the buried Army of Terracotta Warriors and Horses.  In Chengdu, the famed center of spicy Sichuan cuisine, tour participants will have the chance to hug a baby panda at the Giant Panda Breeding Center, and then it’s on to Chongqing, which was China’s WWII capital and home of the Flying Tigers..

 

Sightseeing in Suzhou, China’s artistic center, includes canals, a classic garden and a fascinating silk mill, and in the little water town of Tongli a gondola ride passes picturesque Ming houses, cobbled streets and bridges.  The tour ends in Shanghai, which was once known as the “Pearl of the Orient,” and is now China’s most sophisticated and cosmopolitan city. 

 

The program provides comprehensive sightseeing tours with entrance fees, wonderful guides, 4-star hotel accommodations with American buffet breakfasts, 22 other delicious meals, and special treats like a Peking Duck dinner, a Dim Sum Banquet, ahutong tour, a home-hosted lunch, afternoon tea in a neighborhood teahouse, the Sichuan Opera, a Tang Dynasty Show, the Shanghai Acrobats and more.  (Please note that other tour companies list many of these included activities as “optional,” which means they charge as much as $270 extra, in order to keep their tour prices artificially low.)

 

The prices quoted are the cash discount rate, are per person double occupancy and are subject to availability.  The air fare add-ons from Washington, D.C. and Chicago are $190, from Boston $220, from St. Louis $240, from Minneapolis $300 and from Houston $310.

 

For additional information and reservations, log onto www.chinaspree.com and click China Tours, then Specials.  China Spree’s toll-free telephone number is 855-556-6868.

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