Our flight to Hong Kong from LAX, Terminal 4, Gate 41 boarded around 1:15am. As I had a window seat, I was assigned Group 4 for boarding, while the girls were Group 7. This was the second time in a month we've flown to HK, and both trips have been on 777 which are the long haul workhorse airplane for many carriers.
What was interesting about our current route is that it would fly us over the US and Canada and then over Russia and mainland China. On our previous trip we flew over the Pacific Ocean and Japan and the China Sea. I wonder if the current political tensions affected the routing.
I really liked the movie selections on this flight; however, after a great pork dinner at 3am, I elected to sleep and caught 4-5 hours of sleep before waking up to enjoy a snack and watch a couple movies. About 2 hours before landing breakfast was served and I enjoyed a Dim Sum breakfast while the girls had the fruit plate.
We landed at 8am and cleared immigration without a hitch and collected our luggage and then cleared customs with nothing to declare. Since it was now 9am and we could not check in to our AirBnB apartment until noon, we had a leisurely time exploring the airport. I attempted to get some HK$ from the right hand side HSBC cash machine but it errored out. I was able to get cash from the left side machine and a local lady let me use her phone to call HSBC. That call didn't resolve the issue of no cash being dispensed. However, a later check of my bank account indicated a credit was automatically issued so all was good.
We purchased our City Flyer bus tickets to travel into the city. HK is extremely friendly to senior travelers and the bus concession rate was 50% of Anastasia's $39HK fare. We then enjoyed a nice and flavorful noodle soup lunch before catching our A22 bus into town.
Our AirBnB hosts had provided excellent directions to the apartment and we arrived right at noon. After a short wait, Jai, our host let us in and briefed us on the unit and gave us bus directions to get to Kowloon Park. As the unit hadn't been cleaned before we arrived, he was going to use that time to do so. So we parked our luggage and headed out on our first bus adventure. The #26 bus took us right to the park and we walked around a bit. Anastasia wasn't as enthusiastic about the cartoon characters as we thought she would be, and coupled with jet lag, we caught an early bus back to our apartment where Jai was just finishing cleaning.
The apartment is definitely cosy, but certainly adequate for our needs with a separate small bedroom for Angela and I and a nice daveno sleeper for Anastasia along with a compact kitchen and teensy bathroom. We are on the 3rd floor, but there is an elevator. We like staying outside the tourist areas, and this certainly fits the bill.
By 7 we were all flaked out in bed for a nice rest.
Tomorrow is planned to be an exploration day. Stay tuned.
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