Sunday 6th April

Our last day in HK was extremely hectic as we tried to jam some more sightseeing in before catching a plane to Rome. Our main mission was to see the Giant Buddha which has a cable car ride (Built by the same company that did Skyrail) up to a extremely high peak where sits this amazing, enormous, Buddha. The cable car ride to the peak was exceptionally high and very long, what astounded us most was watching the locals below actually walk this very long, steep and grueling trail. When we finally alighted from the cable car we had a 20 minute walk through a pretty village and then a climb up lots of steps to the Buddha.

We took the usual touristy photos and quickly hiked it back to the cable car. Time was starting to run away as we had to be back to the hotel by 2:00pm for checkout and it was now 1:00pm, and we still had to get down the mountain, back on several trains, pack and leave the hotel!

Now that Leon was feeling more confident as we were on our way back (Leon hates heights and was quite nervous on the way up in the cable car) he decided to tell us about the accident that had occurred on this cableway not that long ago. The HK Cableway had only just recently been reopened after being closed for several months as he thought a cable car had fallen off!! And as luck would have it….when we were coming into the last station, the cableway came to a stop ……then started going backwards back up the mountain. Charlotte and I were in hysterics as Leon was gesturing to all the other cable cars we were passing that we were going the wrong way and trying to change its direction by pretending that he could push it the other way and making everyone else do the same. It then started up again in the right direction but just as we were coming into a station it stopped yet again. By this time Leon was working out…. if we could get out of the cable car, we probably could jump and wouldn’t end up with too many injuries! My main concern was time was getting away and we would be very late for our checkout! Finally the cableway started up again and we made it safely back to solid ground (He He).So on with our running shoes, jumping from train to train we arrived back at the hotel quite late but no one seemed to mind.

Our flight to Rome didn’t leave till 12:05am so we had a lot of time to fill in dragging all our luggage around, but from all our train travel, we had noticed signs at the central station that seemed to suggest you could check in your luggage there. When we found the check-in it was just like we were at the airport, only it was all set up at the train station in the middle of town. So we checked the luggage in and only had to carry around our cabin bags. Again the Chinese have things very well organized.

While waiting for our departure to Rome we were relaxing in the Priority Pass Lounge and as we had a few hours to wait, Leon decided to have a shower. Soon after entering the shower room the entire lounge was serenaded with an Italian opera classic O’ Sole Mio, little did Leon know that his operatic whistling could be heard throughout the entire lounge…..*#@! Until Charlotte in desperation and complete embarrassment banged on the door to make him stop.