Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire!

Hello readers. Apologies for the long pause between posts. We Cassons have done stuff that to blog about but just never got around to it.

However, what we’re up to now is worthy of sharing. As I write this post we Cassons are holidaying in Hong Kong’s Disneyland resort during a four day stopover en-route to a surprise visit to England, although it’s only a surprise to our respective parents.

Due to this element of secrecy we haven’t been able to share anything on Facebook for fear of being rumbled.

Anyway, it’s now day day three of four in Walt’s wonderful take on the World and we’ve fully explored the place, and had so much fun.

We stayed at the main hotel which is massive and elegant at the same time.

It had an indoor pool, three restaurants, a grand lobby and a live five piece band that cracked out some groovy tunes.

The weather here so far has been quite wet but it did keep people away from park, which was cool since crowds annoy the sh*t out of me. We managed to see half the park before rain stopped play on our first full day in Disneyland. We also got quite a bit of shopping done too. Obviously the highlight of the day was going on the Small World ride. It never gets old, and you just can’t help but hum its catchy little tune.

  

Our second day in the park was spent exploring the areas we didn’t cover the previous day. The rain held off and we hit the park with gusto. Since it wasn’t raining the park was a little busier but not to the extent that it felt there was no room to breathe, and the queues were bearable. Phew! Since it was Easter time the park had its own Easter Egg hunt but not for chocolate, it had created large egg shaped versions of its many franchises and dotted them all around the park. Which in all honesty was pretty cool. Take a look at the pictures below to see what I mean.

Not a bad attempt by Disney to make Easter a little more interesting. The rest of our stay in Disneyland was peppered with eating, drinking, going on rides, shopping, getting wet, lounging around and just generally soaking up the wonderful atmosphere only Disneyland creates.

Once our stay in Disneyland had come to an end it was time to head off to England to catch up with friends and family.

The 13hr flight went relatively quickly, as did our walk through customs and immigration. After a little wait at the baggage carousel we were on our way to Heathrow’s (crap airport) pick-up lounge and the arms of my lovely sister. However, our journey wasn’t quite over as we still had a a 3hr journey to the Romney Marsh via the M25 at rush hour. Holy cow! Had I forgotten how busy that road was, and how man cars there were in England. Australians really don’t know what a busy road looks like. Anyway, by late evening we were in the company of our wonderful friends the Geddes and setting up camp at their place (thanks again Roy and Karen for a magical time).

 

Our stay in England was a short one, weighing in at six nights. Not long, but long enough to see lots of beautiful people. We visited old haunts, drank in new places, stayed in manor houses, had a traditional English cooked breakfast in a roadside cafe, surprised people, laughed a lot, stayed in a converted oast house, drove quickly through country lanes, ate loads, consumed a lot of alcohol, checked out Greatstone Primary School, had an awesome party to catch up with lots of people, danced like we didn’t have a care in the world, had some awesome meals with awesome people, ate flapjack (thanks Ann & Alan), fell asleep too much, reminisced, remembered, saw adults where there were once children  and said far too many goodbyes. Before we knew it we were back at Heathrow (crap airport) and heading back to Hong Kong for another stay, but this time in Hong Kong itself.

Okay, at long last I’m back to finish this post. Goodness knows where the time has gone. So, our flight to Hong Kong came with a surprise: as a birthday treat Bec had organised for us Cassons to travel business class from London to Melbourne. It was fantastic and definitely the way to fly. It was everything I expected. The service was better, the food was better and having a chair that extended into a bed was fabulous.

Our time in downtown Hong Kong was spent exploring places not usually found outside of this amazing city. So in between trips to the shops and markets we visited a cafe on the 35th floor of a high rise building that was once an apartment to a man that collected comic books. The apartment was turned into a cafe, decked out in  a beautiful shade of purple and festooned with thousands of Chinese comics. Lucy and I had a ball checking out one serious collection of graphic novels. Although I did forget that the comics had to be read from back to front.

Our next stop was a cat cafe. Yep! A cat cafe. A cafe that had about twelve cats that walked freely around the place mingling with its patrons. It was great. In fact it was so good we visited it a couple of times. All us Cassons love cats so it was a must have experience. Dining out on fresh cookies whilst sipping hot ginger tea in the company of felines was absolute bliss. It made us puuurrrrrrrr!

We also took in the Hong Kong Harbour light show. A supposedly fantastic display that lit up the place at night with its dazzling array of light beams synchronised to music, and best viewed from one of the official boats that took you up and down the harbour to give you an unspoilt view of the lights. We were excited and boarded our ferry with fervour, and that’s where the excitement stopped. The ferry was a tug that pumped its exhaust fumes straight into your face, the light show looked like a bunch of people standing on the top of buildings waving candles whilst the journey on the tug went on for so long we Cassons felt like jumping overboard and swimming back to our hotel. Only Stevie Wonder would have been impressed by this travesty of a light show. Grrrrr!

 

However, we laughed about this experience and continued to enjoy our time in Hong Kong. Unfortunately it wasn’t long before we were due to fly home, on my birthday. Business class. Not a bad way to celebrate one’s special day, and not a bad way to bring a holiday to a close either. Toodle-pip.