20250918 Thursday, September 18, 2025 Dalian, Liaoning Province

20250918 Thursday, September 18, 2025 Dalian, Liaoning Province

We had another pleasant breakfast in Mamsen’s as the ship docked in Dalian.  This is a huge port city with a population of over 7million.  There are high rise apartments and skyscrapers all along the city’s skyline.  Fall is arriving in Liaoning Province, and with it, less heat and humidity.

We took the ship’s complimentary shuttle into Dalian, where we got dropped off a the Friendship Mall, which is a huge multi floor high end shopping mall.  Everything inside is very nice, but also very expensive.  Ben found a photo vest he had been looking for, but it was ¥999 or $143 USD.  On Amazon.com it can be had for $25 USD.  There are some very fancy gift and decorating items up on the 6th floor including a nice jade carving for only ¥18M, or $2.5M USD.  For the more budget minded, there is a nice two sided silk embroidery panel with pandas for a mere ¥17,550 or $2470 USD.  
We walked around the outside of the mall and found a pop-up clothing store with some more affordable items like rain coats for ¥99 ($14) and UV hoodies for ¥59 ($8.30) which would be good buys, except that Chinese sizing runs very small, and they didn’t have the 3X-5X sizes for Americans.  
We descended into the subway tunnels to get inside one of the city’s many squares, which are actually round.  There are interesting relics of the city’s colonial past in the form of European styled architecture scattered around the big circle.  
We returned to the ship for lunch in the buffet.