traveldiary.stracke.us

This was one long travel ” day”. We left the Holiday Inn in Tokyo Narita on Thursday, May 19th at 2:30 PM . We left Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific at 15 minutes past midnight and had a flying time of 12.5 hours crossing China and all of Russia on our way to Paris. The Cathay Pacific service spoiled us along the way. Gabi and I were in row 88 on the upper deck of a Boeing 747-400 and there were three flight attendants for 24 passengers in our ” private ” cabin. After dinner, I watched 2 movies :
“The Aquatic Life of …” with Bill Murray, which I did not like and ” In Good Company ” , which I think is a great movie. I slept for the next 7 hours until the 3- course breakfast on board.
We arrived at Charles De Gaulle Airport at 6:45 Am Paris-time and connected to German Wings for our flight to Cologne Germany at 8:50 AM. This flight had cost 35 USD per person; paying fuel for a rental car would have been more expensive.
We took a train into the city of Cologne and continued on a Deutsche Bahn EuroCity train along the picturesque castle route up the Rhine river valley to Frankfurt. Gabi and I went to the train’s dining car for lunch, while enjoying the scenery from our panorama window. German food tasted really good after the long ” drought” in Japan. We switched from train to rental car and drove the German Autobahn for another 3.5 hours to Biberach in Baden- Württemberg. We finally were reunited with Sonja after a 36.5 hours travel day.

On February 20th, we checked into our Hong Kong high rise hotel and had a great view of the downtown area from our room. We walked through the neighborhood and ended up in a 10-story mall, where we broke down
( after India), and had dinner in an American sportsbar. The ribs were actually good. One US highway sign on the wall stated: ” Speed Limit 165 MPH – Radar Enforced”.
The area around our hotel was full of old Chinese markets with grilled ducks on display, or live chicken to be slaughtered at time of purchase; talk about being fresh. There were also multiple fish sellers, who kept the fish alive in water filled trays. Some energetic fish jumped out and were flopping around on the ground. I needed some dress shirts laundered and the laundry service right across from our hotel had next day service for 2 Dollars versus 5 Dollars charged by the hotel. Our towels were stinking so badly from the disinfectant in our Indian hotel rooms, that we had them washed as well.
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We are at Hong Kong Airport and will be boarding our Cathay Pacific flight for Thailand in a few minutes. Hong Kong is very modern, efficient and high tech. It is cleaner than Germany or the US ! Everybody is extremely friendly, English speaking or not. We navigated the city by old fashioned double decker tram, metro or bus. The bus drivers always alerted us, when we had to get off the bus and were very friendly.Our airport shuttle bus picked us up at 6 AM sharp, not a minute late. The Chinese really seem to have their act together and are very orderly and disciplined. More on this topic in the next post.

Oh What a Relief it is! No, not Alka Seltzer!….. Hong Kong!!!