Our China adventure began with the first of our three flights being rescheduled 16 minutes later. This reduced our layover in Chicago to only 45 minutes. Despite an aborted landing--we seemed way too high to be on approach--we managed to make it to Chicago on time and had no problems making our flight to LA.
Flying first-class to LA was nice. You have to love heated mixed nuts. Yummm. The food was generally good and the seats quite comfortable. I got about an hour's worth of sleep. Henry Winkler was sitting in the seat across the aisle from me with his daughter. The flight landed about 30 minutes early. After getting through customs and doing a little window shopping, we headed for the Cathay Pacific Business Class Lounge.
The lounge was small and crowded, but we had some melon, cookies and drinks and sat in the comfy chairs and awaited our flight. I grabbed a couple of small bottles of water, a trick I learned in Kenya a year ago. It is always good to have a bottle of water around to brush your teeth with or just because you are thirsty. These bottles came along for the entire trip and proved their value more than once.
The flight to Hong Kong was good, at least in as far as any 14+ hour flight can be good! We started off with a heated, lemon-scented towel (first of three) and beverage of our choice. Anne slept through dinner . . . in fact through the first half of the flight. I watched three movies, Chocolat, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Head Over Heels, and got about four hours of sleep. The movies were pretty good, and although I had seen Crouching Tiger before it was worth seeing again.
We landed in Hong Kong at around 5:45 a.m., about 45 minutes early. We got some money out of the ATM and we called our parents. We took the train in to Kowloon station and the free bus to the hotel. Or more specifically, to a hotel a block from ours and we walked to the Ramada Inn. We checked in at 7:30 a.m. and they had a room for us, so I took a nap for an hour and then we showered and changed and felt vaguely human again. We headed out into the rain, stopping at a 7-11 to pickup a Snapple Grapeade and some M&Ms. * Note: I can get Snapple Grapeade in Hong Kong but not in Lexington, VA. :(
We walked around Tsim Tsa Tsui and checked out the shops until 11:30 a.m. and then stopped in the Kangaroo Pub for lunch. We checked out some more shops and headed back to the room at about 1:00 p.m. because I was about to fall over. We took a three-and-a-half hour nap! Life is good. We got up and headed down to the Star Ferry, which we took to Central. We walked to the Chinese Section and on the way we saw all of the Filipino women picnicking on their day off. There was not a lot of activity, but we saw some of the butcher shops with the live eels and fish and such. We headed back to the Star Ferry and got back to the hotel and were in bed by 9:30-10:00 p.m.