We rose a bit earlier this morning because we needed to leave the hotel around 9.15am. This meant getting up at around 7am in order to finish packing the bags and getting down to breakfast with enough time to enjoy the wonderful “spread” that was put before us each morning in our hotel.
We opted to avoid the challenge of the bus/train option to the airport this morning. Instead we arranged for a “shuttle” to pick us up. We thought it was going to be a van with driver but it turned out that the “shuttle” was in fact a lovely Mercedes complete with chauffeur!! The cost of this was not substantially more than the bus/train option – LESSON LEARNT!!. The return trip to the airport was wonderful. Ah……. what a difference a chauffeur makes. The Princess was very impressed – as was I.
With the bags unloaded in front of the departure terminal (by the chauffeur of course) we loaded the bags on to a trolley and proceeded to the Cathay check-in desk.
We had not listed (not through a lack of trying) for the flight however, the flight was “wide open” so we were checked in and given seat allocation at the check-in desk. Indeed, we were allocated exit row seats.
So……….. here I am at 5pm Rome time (dark outside as we head East) sitting in seat 54C next to my beautiful Princess on an Airbus A340 heading direct to Hong Kong. We have been “fed and watered” and I am enjoying my third glass of French Merlot and listening to Mary Black on my iPod and finishing the last of the Roe’s Winter Tour series.
It is hard to believe that we have been on the road for three weeks (four weeks for The Princess). We have literally travelled around the world. We have visited 5 countries (6 if you included Hong Kong) and 2 continents (3 if you included Hong Kong). We have attended 2 conferences, met and associated with wonderful people. We have experienced below -21 degrees in temperature, snow, sun and little bit of rain. We have completed the whole journey on standby (staff) travel without any hassle and the who adventure has been without incident or argument.
We have learnt that we live in an incredible world in which the people are all motivated by the same thing – something to eat, something to eat, some love and a place to sleep.
We have also learnt that we are truly blessed to be able to experience the wonder of some of our earth and we can’t wait for our next trip.
We hope you have enjoyed the summary of our trip. In the coming days we will publish some of our photo’s to our gallery. You can visit the gallery at: http://www.flickr.com/wegotwo
We look forward to catching up with whoever takes the time to read our travel blog.
Until our next trip – love to you. Roey and The Princess
