Back in Charles Town

Back in Charles Town

After twenty-five days, fifteen flights, eight hotels, and twenty thousand miles, we are home.  It was a great trip, perhaps a few days too long and a bit too ambitious in terms of cities visited, but one that we’ll cherish for a long time.  The flights and the hotels were universally great, typical of what you can expect in Asia compared to the USA.  We were talking about our likes and dislikes on the trip and really didn’t come up with any dislikes. Of our fifteen flights, not one of them departed or landed late and that is really a staggering statistic. 

On our last full day in Hong Kong, we woke up to breathless news accounts on CNN, Asia News and BBC about how the police had moved in and removed barriers at the Pro-Democracy encampment.  We looked out our window and everything seemed to be the same as the day before, so after breakfast we walked over to the camp to see what had changed. There were lots more cameras and news crews, and we even walked past the CNN newsperson who had delivered the big news that morning, but we saw nothing different from our previous visits.  Turns out the police and bailiffs had simply enforced a judgment by the courts that allowed them to remove one barrier to open up about two hundred yards of roadway to allow trucks to get into and out of a place called Citic Tower, hardly news at all, but enough to capture some morning headlines.  Having had enough of the media hype, we were drawn back to Hong Kong Park and visited the Conservatory, filled with tons of cool plants, waterfalls and lily ponds before heading for a repeat visit to the Aviary. We saw lots more birds whose technical names were things such as:  bright green bird with red eyes, huge white bird with pale purple crest, etc. It was like being in Jurassic Park, everything was so foreign to us and so very exciting to observe.

Upon departing Hong Kong for an overnight at Narita, they pulled a switcheroo on the type of aircraft we were to fly. Instead of an Airbus 330, Asiana used a 747 that had the business class seats on the upper deck, which is our favorite configuration. It was a wonderful trip down memory lane and the service was spectacular. We arrived at Narita at 9 pm, got to the hotel at about 10 pm and departed at 8:25 am, so it wasn’t a very long stay at the hotel. Our ANA flight home was very comfortable but I had changed our seats so that we were sitting side by side rather than one in front of the other. The seats were 1-2-1, which meant we had no window, which bothers me a lot since I really need to be able to look out at the horizon.  The first thing that everyone in a window seat did was to close the shades, and they kept them closed until ten minutes before landing.  Other than that it was a really delightful flight that allowed us plenty of time to watch some movies, eat some elegant food and savor lots of good wine. As it turned out, we really couldn’t interact with each other without having to lean way forward since these seats are designed for privacy as opposed to intimacy.

Now it is time to adjust to the real world of shopping, cooking, cleaning and catching up on household issues.  I don’t understand how things break while we are gone, but our humidifier doesn’t work, the chilled water in the refrigerator door is on the fritz, and I’m still checking out other systems.  These are things that will have to wait until we are over jetlag, which has slowed us to a crawl and fogged our brains to the point that reading newspaper articles requires two attempts. The rule of thumb is that jetlag lasts for one day for each hour of time difference, so that should get us over jetlag the day before we depart for Europe. Good timing!

Once rested, we’ll turn our attention to Thanksgiving, which we are calling Thanksmas since we’ll be combining Thanksgiving and Christmas this year.  Cindy’s mom will be visiting, as will Colin and Meagan and Patrick and Hannah, so we’ll have a full house for a few days of fun and frolic. Tomorrow I begin menu planning so that I’ll have a plan for shopping on Monday.  Looking forward to all of it.  Best wishes and happy Thanksgiving, Cindy and Wm