24th October 2010
Well, we finally set off from Tamworth at about 2.15pm, with Colo at the wheel of our charabang. Made good time and arrived at The Crowne Plaza about 5 (if you are ever flying from Heathrow, can recommend this place, 1st class and very cheap, thanks Sue). Said some emotional good byes to Colin (cheers matey) and checked in, blimey the place is busy.
Kids wanted to go to the pool so took them down for a quick swim and then got back to the room dressed and headed for the restaurant.
Wendie had arranged to meet Sabrina for a couple of drinks and to say goodbye, she duly arrived and there was some blubbing, as expected, but generally had some laughs about 'the good old days'. We got a text from the Marlows, who had landed at Heathrow from their hols in the Oman. By the time we got back to them they were already on the M40. If we had been a bit quicker, we would have caught them nearer our hotel and had ANOTHER farewell drink. Would have liked to know what Oman was like though.
Anyway, just saying final goodbyes to Sabrina, when bugger me didn't Ainne & Alex appeared, I'm gonna be p****d at this rate, but it was great to see them, the kids were over the moon as well. Wendie couldn't see them because of the tears in her eyes as she hadn't recovered from blubbing over Sabrina!
Then the time came for Ainne & Alex to go, well I thought we would have to get the mop and bucket out there was that much water,as you can imagine it was long and a hard goodbye.
25th/26th October 2010
Up bright and breezy, hearty breakfast, luggage collected from the room checked out and waiting for a taxi to go to terminal 3. Just about to get in the cab, yours truly had left his coat in the room. This was despite a concerted effort to be extra careful about our belongings whilst we are travelling and NOT to forget anything. Fell at the first fence!! Anyway, all loaded and we are off, 5 min transfer 20 quid!!! If I come back I'm gonna be a cabbie from Crowne Plaza to terminal 3, 240 pound an hour!!
Checked in ahead of time, nah see, but 19kg over the limit, if we want to take it with us 680 quid extra, yeah well I am travelling with 'our Wend'. I gave it some thought for about a millionth of a second and said, have you got a large plastic bag!!!!!. Take the bags off the scales, over to an area where there is a weighing machine and commence our twentyfifth decluttering exercise. In the same area there is a couple of Somalians with a little kid doing the same thing (wonder if his wife is called Wendie aswell?). You should of seen the crap they were sifting through!!! He was obviously taking his re-cycling from his trip here back with him.
Well, managed to get 20kg ditched, mainly my stuff!!! Checked in, off to the security area. All stripped to our jockies (only joking), almost through without a hitch, when they found in Pete's hand luggage his Action Man and three of his Action Man rifles. I thought they were not going to let AM through as he had no passport or boarding card, but that was ok, the problem was the 2.5 inch rifles!! The security officer set off to see here superiors to check if they could be allowed through (you think I'm joking). She duly returned to tell us we could NOT take them on board. We accepted it but AM was beside himself, he felt extremely vunerable to an attack now and requested we put him right at the bottom of Pete's hand luggage to avoid detection from enemy forces!!!! I thought he was over reacting as he still had his hand grenades and the knife!!!!!!!!!!!!
So we boarded the plane, Premium economy no less, Wendie & the kids complained like mad but I went back to see them in economy and I didn't think it was that bad really!! How ungrateful can you get. Food and service was superb, never travelled in such style, we are not The Allans or The Marlows you know. I reckon we were only 20mins into the flight when Peter struck. Glass full of something knocked off his tray and smashed on the floor, good boy its normally me that does that. Rest of the flight was great, 11.5 hours went pretty quick really. Perfect landing every thing tickity boo, when as we start to leave the plane, poor little Niamh, chucks up all over the place, 3 times, (poor little Niamh!!!!!!!!). No problem Dad cleaned it up, oh yes I did, and we duly got off.
Pretty uneventful through customs other than they were all oriental looking, unusal experience for me anyway I'm more used to Pakkies and Muslims checking my documents!!!!!!
The transfer was amazing, I reckon we hardly saw another car for about 15 miles on a major three/four lane motorway, it was surreal.
Arrived at Disney Hotel, as you can imagine, awesome, but nobody there, it really was so quiet, got the stuff dumped in the room straight back down, got our passes and set off for the Disney Park, 10mins away.
Disney was just like the hotel, hardly anyone there, which was great. So safe, kids just ran around getting on all the rides, they must have gone on Space Mountain (a roller coaster in the pitch black darkness) at least twenty times.
We were all getting very tired now, none of us had slept for 27 hours, so we headed back to the Hotel. Spotted the most fanatstic eagle flying above the car park (yes Colo I like me birds!!). It turns out that there are hundreds of them in HK, we saw them everywhere, they never got boring to see. Kids still wanted a swim (may aswell there is nobody in the pool) so we sat by the pool for a couple of hours, then had some scram in the cafe area as the main restaurant was fully booked, although there appeared to be no one in the hotel. We found out later that lots of locals, not residents use the restaurant, hence its generally fully booked, as it was for Wednesday aswell.
Had a good nights kip, got down to breakfast, what a spread, couldn't think of anything I wanted to eat that was not there. Went along with the locals and had some Dim Sum for me breaky, had photo's taken with all the Disney characters, bloody marvellous. Very odd feeling being in a massive room with folk that all pretty much look the same, I think we were the only westerners there, also surreal (it's me new word) that the orientals only have one kid each, the only ones we saw with two had twins!! They also take photographs of anything, I mean anything, the favourite photo is of what is on the plate just before they eat it. Col, Sarah, Carol, Bob remember that guy on the top of the mountain taking a picture of his sausage? Apparently they then put the photos on Facebook to recommend restaurants to their pals, how strange. We in the western world do similiar with girls and big boys toys!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Off to The Park, again no traffic and hardly anyone there, again really odd feeling that we looked so different to everyone else,( folk just kept looking and pointing). Niamh absolutely fascinated them, they wanted there pictures taken with her everywhere we went, perhaps they were putting her picture on Facebook as something nice to eat!!
We were all well rested and the Disney experience definitely was much better because of it. We rode the train, the kids did Space Mountain another 20 times, Wendie ventured on today, brave girl.
The highlight for me at the Disney Park was the parade, it was fab, got it all on video for posterity, real feel good experience.
Back to the Hotel and into the swimming pool (nobody else in it), the pool slide was brill, more like a water park, kids even talked me into having a go, they then couldn't get me off it. Met some folk from Queensland, over to watch the rugby, Wallabies v All Blacks, the one chap worked for Cougar, he was there entertaining, said that we were going to go and I had a chain of sports shops back in the UK, didn't get us any tickets, won't be stocking Cougar in MY shops. Tight git.
Dressed for dinner, which we had to go to the Disney sister hotel Hollywood for as ours was fully booked, only a couple of minutes away, no problem.
There we are again, the only black ducks in a sea of white!! Noticed something else at this place, they don't drink! There must have been 400 orientals in this place eating and not one of them had anything but water in front of them, spooky, so I drank water aswell, it ain't gonna catch on with me. More pictures with Niamh, more looking, pointing, really odd. Fab place though, food was magnificent.
Back to our Hotel, nice bottle of Cabernet Sauvingyon (red wine), sod that water lark, then off to kip, ready for the transfer to HK the next day.
Watch this space for our HK experience, including, the transfer, the hotel, toilet problem for Niamh, The Peak, market, shopping, Pete's rap, live animals, suits, watches, Ocean Park, the Band, spiders and more bloody pictures with Niamh.
The Skerritts
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