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Published: March 16th 2010
And so it begins…our “Around the World in 86 Days” adventure. But it didn’t start out that way. The original plan was a 16 day Panama Canal New Years cruise and a southeast U.S. driving trip in April and May. But, 4 days before the New Years cruise our travel agent called and asked if we wanted to be voluntarily bumped to a 35 day cruise in March from Hong Kong to Cape Town. Needless to say we jumped at the chance. So plans were rearranged and now included 3 nights in Hong Kong before boarding the Regent 7 Seas Voyager, a 6 day safari in South Africa after the cruise and a revised version of our southeast U.S. driving trip to include the Talladega NASCAR race, the Kentucky Derby and the Indianapolis 500.
We arrived in Hong Kong after a 15 hour red eye flight on Cathay Pacific that took us over Vancouver, the Adak Islands of Alaska and Siberia. We still haven’t mastered sleeping on planes in the economy section so the 1st order of business once in Hong Kong was to get some much needed sleep. Our hotel, the new Hyatt Regency is now the tallest
building on the Kowloon side with 24 floors, a 3 story shopping mall below and a 40 story condo project called Masterpiece above. Prices at Masterpiece range from 2 million to 29 million U.S. dollars. The views from both our hotel room on the 19th floor and from one of the model condos on the 63rd floor were spectacular. Having seen most of the tourist attractions on previous visits; this trip we wanted to have several pairs of slacks made at Chuck’s favorite tailor, make our pilgrimage to Ned Kelley’s Jazz Club to visit with our band leader friend Colin, and to hopefully see the best view in Hong Kong from Victoria Peak that has eluded us in the past due to inclement weather. We are happy to report that we did all three and threw in a wonderful 63rd birthday celebration for Chuck. He said the day was perfect from the surprise breakfast birthday muffin compliments of his 2 new Chinese friends at the Hyatt to the 5 star dinner at Joel Robuchon’s L’Atelier. There we dined on Japanese Kobe beef and had the live trio sing “Happy Birthday” as a special dessert was presented. All in all it
was a great beginning to our adventure!
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Ward
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The adventure continues
Glad to see you guys are not slowing down this year!! Happy Birthday!!!