Before we get into the detail we want you to know we really enjoyed this cruise and would do it again.
Our holiday started in Bejing, and we flew from Manchester via Dubai with Emirates on their A480s with 30 Kilos each of luggage allowed. We had a two nights pre-cruise stay at the Marriott (City Wall) hotel. The hotel has good rooms, a good Pizza restaurant but breakfast (which was provided free) was only so-so (pre-prepared food only warm, not hot and eggs decidedly underdone for us). Note we were there 29 April to 1 May which is a Chinese bank holiday, Beijing was very busy with the world and his wife on holiday there!
On the 30th April we walked to the Temple of Heaven (this took us about an hour -- Bejing is a large city and distances on the local maps underplay the distances). We bought a Temple, Gardens and other parts ticket, however did not really understand it as all in Chinese, and one of the buildings within the gardens we then would have had to play extra to go into (so we opted not to). After we left the Temple we went across to the acrobatic theatre and booked tickets for the evening acrobatic show -- only charged us 100 Yuan. It was a warm day so after an ice cream in the local KFC we then got a bus up to Tianamen Square (only 1 Yuan/RMB to travel any distance on the bus) which took about 10 minutes -- the buses have the stop place names in English(ish) as well as Chinese which was useful.
D503 - Starboard side so had the sun for west/east crossing. occasional smell of cigarette smoke as above promenade deck (smoking allowed on starboard side). minisuite so good size bathroom.