Welcome Everyone.

Welcome to News From Italy, my blog about our Italian Adventure. Although this blog has now ceased publication I will be continuing to blog and I am sincerely hoping that my many followers here will move with me to Travel Tales blog to follow my next adventures wherever they may take me. The links to my other blogs are:-


I look forward to keeping in touch with you via them, thanks once again for all the support you have given 'News From Italy' over the years.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

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.

8 comments:

  1. Welcome back Linda. I look forward to hearing more about your trip. Isn't Hong Kong airport wonderful with its efficiency!! Fiumicino is such a contrast...

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  2. Welcome back! Now, we're all ears/eyes/hearts!

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  3. Hi and welcome home! Lovely to heara from you, and glad you are safely back, and now have power and phones again. Reassuring to know that the Law of Sod still operates as usual - some things never change and you can always rely on that!!! The trip sounds wonderful and it doesn't seem like five minutes since you went - I expect you feel like that too. I shall look forward to looking at the photos in due course.

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  4. Hi and welcome home! Lovely to heara from you, and glad you are safely back, and now have power and phones again. Reassuring to know that the Law of Sod still operates as usual - some things never change and you can always rely on that!!! The trip sounds wonderful and it doesn't seem like five minutes since you went - I expect you feel like that too. I shall look forward to looking at the photos in due course.

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  5. Hello Linda, Pleased that you had a safe trip home, and that you had the most fabulous time in Hong Kong. I totally understand about you not blogging whilst away.. as you say very low priority .. don't blame you!

    Thank you for calling into my blog :-) so pleased you liked the post.. just as pleased as I was when the surprise card came through my door :-)

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  6. Glad you had a great trip to HK and a safe although long trip home again.

    I suggest camera first then laundry :D

    Thxs for popping by. Work in Italy didn't work out, but I still have my flat in Calabria, so will be there almost as much.

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  7. Welcome back and get to blogging. I just found this....duhhhh

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  8. Thanks everyone, slowly getting back into the routines of life in Italy again. Still missing both our daughter and Hong Kong though.
    It was a fantastic trip which I look forward to sharing with you over the next few weeks.

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