Home In Italy

We knew we were home when we suffered a power failure before we had even finished unpacking!  To my surprise though this was not the usual case  of me overloading the  3kw system and throwing the trip switch, by trying to use more than one appliance at once like maybe the washing machine and hairdryer.  No this was  much more serious no electricity or telephone line from around lunchtime yesterday until about 11pm last night. Just at a time when we needed both, washing to do, calls to make and I would have loved to get online! We discovered from our neighbours that a fairly large local area was effected due to some tree felling taking both the power and telephone cables out.

We left Hong Kong at 12.10am, local time on Monday morning arriving back at Fumicino Airport at 7.15am, local time yesterday morning after a nearly fourteen hour fight due to the headwinds. In sharp contrast to the efficiency, cleanliness and modernity of Hong Kong Aiport Fumicino felt somewhat jaded. It took an unbelievable two hours before we were actually driving away from the long term car park. Even after the long walk to baggage reclaim there was still the inevitable long wait for our luggage. We began to think it was one man moving the luggage alone as it seemed to arrive in batches of around six cases, followed by a gap while another trolley load was found. It was a relief to see our cases eventually appear as we had not seen them since around 7.30pm on Sunday evening in Hong Kong. How efficient to had been to have been able to deposit our luggage at the in town check in before even leaving the city on the Airport Express. With our luggage checked in we were able to enjoy a final supper in town at 'Red' a restaurant on a roof terrace garden floor in the IFC building, Hong Kong's tallest.

After supper and farewells we made our way out to the airport, where like so many other places in Hong Kong, we could have shopped until we dropped had we the inclination.
I  did not as I had hoped get the opportunity to post at all while we were away. To be honest there was so much  to see and do that computing took a very low priority and I only checked into my Facebook account a handful of times as I had messages to retrieve.  The hundreds of photos I took were all downloaded onto my Notebook on a regular basis and I now have to edit them all and sort out which ones to Blog. I will do this gradually as there is so much that I would like to share with you, without boring you with an excessive number of photos! I will Blog some here, post some selections to Facebook and  the serious photography buffs will be able to view the whole lot if they are so inclined via my Flickr.com account.

Our heartfelt thanks to our daughter and her partner for moving to Hong Kong, therefore giving us the golden opportunity to visit them. Also for helping make our trip to visit them a truly memorable one.  We had a wonderful time and hope to be able to visit Asia again, as there is so much more we would like to see now we have had a taster!

Thankfully the weather today is so much warmer than it was when we left three weeks ago and I feel that Primervera / Spring is  here at last. The garden is certainly looking spring like with the apricot blossom out, daffodils everywhere and a beautiful pink camellia in bloom. I must get out into the garden with my camera but first there is the washing to do.