July 5th
We left on the journey of a lifetime after having a nice lunch with Granny Turner. The flights out of Orlando and Atlanta were delayed due to bad weather in the Atlanta area. The flight out of Atlanta sat on the taxiways for about 1.5 hours before getting underway towards the west. This meant that we arrived into San Francisco with about 60 minutes before our flight to Hong Kong left.

July 6th
Because of the late arrival in San Francisco, Cindy and I lost our original seat assignments. We ended up in the same area of the plane, but on opposite sides. We were able to meet during one of our bathroom breaks to see how each other were doing. This was a very quiet day, spent entirely in the dark. The flight left San Francisco at 1:30 AM and tried to out run the sun rise the whole way to Hong Kong.

July 7th
The sun finally caught up with us as we passed over the island of Taiwan at about 4:30AM Hong Kong time. The plane landed about an hour later where we finally were able to talk with some of the other families of our travel group and Mathew, our CCAI representative for Hong Kong. The weather in Hong Kong was rainy, so the 45-minute ride from the airport to the hotel didn't allow for much sight seeing. The Shangri-La hotel is in the Kowloon area of Hong Kong, and is one of the nicest hotels that we have ever stayed in. It is right on the Victoria Harbor, and has plenty of shopping right around the corner. The jet lag was not too bad after catching a 4-hour nap after checking into the hotel. Cindy says that the "Coke Light" is not the same as her Diet Coke, stating that it tastes more like regular Coke, being very sweet tasting.

Here are a couple of photos of the hotel.