Collingwood

Well, the show is almost over.
We were up at 5:00am to get ready for our 7:30am pick up at the hotel to arrive at the Hong Kong International Airport in time for our 10:30am, 14-hour flight on Cathay Pacific to Toronto. Hong Kong International Airport (HKG/HKIA) is located on Chek Lap Kok island, which is close to the north coast of Lantau Island. The airport opened on July 6, 1998. Construction began in 1991 and cost over $20 billion. Chek Lap Kok Island, is a man made island that increased Hong Kong's landmass by 1%.
The Lantau Link, which is made up of the Tsing Ma Bridge, the Ma Wan Viaduct, and the Kap Shui Mun Bridge, connects the airport to the city. (We visited these bridges on Friday November7th.)
The new airport is considerably safer, but not nearly as dramatic a setting as the former airport which was essentially downtown Kowloon. You literally landed in the middle of the city, surrounded by tall buildings on either side of the runway. The joke was that you could see people in their apartments as you landed. Many of the T-shirts and other souvenirs depicted this scene. The site of the former airport has been transformed into the Kai Tak Runway Park and still retains many of its aviation design elements. The park retains the spirit of old Kai Tak as a communal destination with open green spaces and a beautiful view of Victoria Harbour.
To say the new Hong Kong airport is huge is a bit of an understatement. By the time we got to the Business Class Lounge and then got back to our gate, we had walked 2.1 km. I have included a picture of one of the signs directing passengers to Gates 5-550!
Don wasn’t feeling too well this morning but once on the plane, after a lunch of real Chinese chicken noodle soup, and a snooze, he was back on his feet again.
Between breakfast and dinner, we were served an egg tart snack. It looked like a lemon tart and was delicious. Hong Kong egg tarts are small (usually about 3 inches in diameter) circular tarts of flaky pastry, filled with a smooth, lightly sweetened egg custard. They are often served at dim sum restaurants, as well as Chinese bakeries in Hong Kong, Macau, China, and Chinatowns around the world.
Shortly after dinner was served, we snuggled down in our lie flat Business Class pods to get a bit of sleep.
We touched down at 12:50 pm and had an easy time going through Customs and picking up our luggage. Our driver from Collingwood, Gary Westlake, picked us up on schedule and we made it smoothly to Collingwood by 3:15pm, despite light rain at times.
We had a lovely welcome home note from our 11-year-old granddaughter, Callie.
We unpacked and then had a 45-minute snooze, a light dinner, and headed off to the Cinema Club movie at 6:00pm to see the movie, The Great Escaper, starring Michael Cain. It was fabulous!
After the movie, two tired people just headed home………….. and went to bed.
And so ended our fabulous Asian Adventure

-17,360 air miles
-34 hours flying time
-1800 nautical miles by ship
-3 countries
-13 cities
-15 port stops
-6 shrines; 5 Temples; 7 Museums; 7 Gardens; 2 Palaces; 5 Castles.
-29 days away
-and an uncountable number of bows!Leer más