Hongkong - Final Day

And then, suddenly, almost unexpectedly, the final day arrived :-(

I'm not able to describe the way Hongkong is in my heart, it surely felt like a home. So the departure felt like leaving for a vacation....

We spent the day walking around TST a final time, then some more hours in the hotel spa and pool. Eventually we took the shuttle bus to Kowloon station, enjoyed the easiness of the in-town check-in and had a last meal in one of the restaurants inside the Elements mall. It was a Thai/Vietnamese bistro and the taste of the dishes was simply great, a perfect farewell dinner.

We had some braised lamb...

...some Thai-style milk tea and...

...braised beef with 5-spices and basil, perfectly tender.

Even the HK airport is as entertaining as a airport gets, unfortunately we had to avoid most of the shopping opportunities in order to reach the gate on time.

Then there it was, the A380. My first flight with this mega-jumbo. Leg room was rather tight, though. 

Technically it was already the next day when we reached London airport for a stopover, but to close the whole HK story, here is the information that I had Eggs Benedict for breakfast before continuing to Berlin.

Hongkong - Getting There

Flight time was about 16 hours including a very short stopover in nightly London Heathrow.

Arrived at Hong Kong International Airport at about 5pm the next day. I was able to sleep several hours during the flight, so I felt quite well. The sub-tropical weather is hot and humid, although it didn't hit me for the next several hours since every place is well air-conditioned here: airport, Airport Express train and apartment.

As always I took pictures of the airport, again nothing special here besides aircraft and concrete.

The apartment is even better than hoped for, with an awesome view over Victoria Harbour onto Tsim Sha Tsui in Kowloon. The giant tower on the left side is the ICC building, the highest building of Hongkong (about 500 mtrs, 108 floors). The 100th floor is open to the public, already on my must-see list.

There is a light show going on every night on the TST waterfront including the ICC tower surface, which I can watch comfortably lying on my bed.

Side view from my window along Jaffe Road. The moon was full which also has something to do with the Mid-Autumn festival here. Unfortunately I was too late and also too tired to see the giant dragon etc. and so far I haven't tried moon-cake either.

Room is quite nice, clean and almost spacious regarding to the Hongkong standards I expected after reading all the Internet reviews. View is breath-taking and sort of hypnotic as well. No need to use the tv here for entertainment. TST waterfront light show is already under way..



And then, after all these hours of excitement and travel torture there came the moment to relax with a light drink and a big smile before retiring to bed.... :-)

Airport series: London

Getting ready for the flight overseas...

Airport series: Arrecife

Well, just another airport. Only the picture behind the windows is different from others...

Airport Series: Munich

Instead of a description of the perfectly generic airport of Munich a quote of the great Douglas Adams about airports in general:

"It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression "As pretty as an airport." Airports are ugly. Some are very ugly. Some attain a degree of ugliness that can only be the result of a special effort. This ugliness arises because airports are full of people who are tired, cross, and have just discovered that their luggage has landed in Murmansk (Murmansk airport is the only exception of this otherwise infallible rule), and architects have on the whole tried to reflect this in their designs."

Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988)

Pair of brown shoes - which are longing for being back in their shoe rack in a cozy home in Berlin :-)

Airport series: The Journey

Friday 28th, 11:00 in the morning: arrived at Buenos Aires Ezeiza airport, check-in was very easy..
..so there was plenty of time for a visit in the airport shops and a last Argentinian cortado.
Then waiting for the departure, which was on time, still early afternoon here.
Saturday 29th, 7:00am: in Madrid the sun rises. Couldn't sleep at all during the flight and feel somehow strange. Lost 4 hours during the flight. The worst thing is, that at about 3am this morning we had passed over the Canary Islands, my final destination :-(
After idling at Madrid airport, terminal 4. for almost 6 hours, we boarded for the flight back to the Canaries...
Teneriffe airport welcomed me at 3pm with a rain shower at about 19 degrees. It was a nice change from the 37 degrees in B.A., though.
Then, Saturday at 4pm, I was at the new home, finally. The view from the terrace made up for the long long way...

Flying through the air

Somewhere in Spain, on the way to Madrid, in an altitude where it's always sunny.
Did someone look up? I'll never know...

Airport series: Madrid

Second or third post about this large airport, I lost track :-)
Despite the horror stories about lost luggage or people missing their flight on Madrid airport, including myself, I like it. Particularly the new Terminal 4 is so colorful, airy and simply nice. Don't know who was the architect, but this is my favorite airport design so far.



Entertainment for the bored stopover passenger is provided: for aircraft enthusiasts there is a good view of the apron...

...for the technically interested there are strange machines :-) .....and for the ladies lots of fashion shops...but one has to watch the clock!!!

Airport series: Arrecife, Lanzarote

Besides the usual and generic airport building the airport of Arrecife featers a runway along the coast. Along the beach, actually, maybe 100 metres from the holiday people on their beach towels..
Inside the same interior as everywhere else, with the main purpose to make people uncomfortable and wanting to leave...

Airport series: Cagliari

Another airport which feels deliberately unfriendly with cold colors and stone surfaces, looks more like a hospital.There isn't much distraction for the waiting passenger, just one tiny bar.

Airport series: Berlin Tempelhof

As a corporate Christmas incentive I participated in a guided tour in the recently closed airport Berlin-Tempelhof. For a change it was just pure fun to be on an airport. Though it was rather strange to walk through the empty halls which were a full scale airport a couple of weeks earlier.
No departures, no arrivals expected...
No queues at the check-in, no pretty stewardesses :-( ....
Nobody waits for the luggage....
The good thing about a closed airport was that we were allowed to get onto the airfield itself...even without security checks...
...and into the subterranean levels where, during second world war, fighter jets had been assembled.
There still are a couple of room which were left as they were captured by the Russian soldiers in 1945. This one had been a movie archive of the Nazis. The Russians opened it with explosives with the result of an annihilating fire of the celluloid films (lasted a couple of days), no film roll survived. Until today there are rumours about what actually was stored there, even the mysterious lost amber room was one of the speculations ;-)

Airport series: Madrid

Sunrise at Madrid airport, again the look of it is pretty similar to almost every airport in the world.But there is something special, the design of the ceiling is remarkable and I like it. It gets an architectural award from me: "best terminal ceiling of 2008" :-)
...and the color matches to this blog design, this earns an extra special award!! :-)