Arrived at Xiamen, known in the West as Amoy, at 10am and had to go through full Chinese immigration including body temperature check, (John said lucky there aren't too many hot women on this cruise)! Xiamen is known as one of China's most liveable cities because it mixes colonial era buildings with modern. A 15 minute bus ride took us downtown where we spent the morning looking at shops. The city is best known as a centre for tea production and this can be seen sorted by hand in shop doorways. It also has many tea houses and we visited one which offered 'in english' afternoon tea, however due to their lack of english, we ended up with Cappucino's! Our plan for the afternoon was to take the short 5 minute ferry to Gulangyu Island. After 10 minutes on the ferry we realised that we were on the wrong one! Somehow we had joined a Chinese sightseeing tour which circumnavigated the island, 40 mins later we finally arrived. Gulangyu is a 'must see' island and contains many colonial mansions which housed the Consulates of 13 nations durng the late 19th Century. We managed to catch the right ferry home. It's been dry but a little chilly today especially noticeable during the 40 minute open air ferry crossing! The day finished with the announcement that we could expect 35 mph winds but as we had had 50 mph winds the night before there was no problem.
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