Sunday July 22, 2018
Going home day is always a drag, and so it was today. We woke up and glumly packed up before walking over to the Disneyland Hotel. At 9 am, they were offering Tai Chi with Master Goofy for all hotel guests. The tai chi portion of the event was quite short, and there was a photo op afterwards. This was the only time we saw a character in traditional Chinese dress though, so that was fun.
We returned to the Explorers Lodge and again had breakfast in the cafe – more congee, this time with noodles for me. My last Chinese breakfast. Then we made one last stop in the hotel gift shop, and went back to the room to finish packing up in order to meet the 11 am checkout deadline. We brought our bags downstairs and inquired about catching a ride to the airport. The hotel staff put us into a small taxi with our bags hanging out the trunk, which wouldn’t close, but was secured by a bungee cord. We were skeptical. But we made it to the airport, bags and all.
We checked in, went through security, had a bite to eat at a food court and picked up a couple of last minute souvenirs. By the time we boarded around 2:30 pm, it was raining. We had had great weather in Hong Kong, and I was pleased to see that we dodged the rain during our stay. We also saw on the airport information boards that there is currently a cyclone in Shanghai. Again, I’m thankful that that did not happen while we were there! We were fortunate to only have one bad weather day on this trip that seriously impeded our touring (during our Great Wall visit).
We took off on time, and as of this writing, we are somewhere over Russia, with 8 hours and 43 minutes of flight time left. (Nonstop from Hong Kong to Toronto is 15 hours and 5 minutes total.) We’ll get into Toronto around 6 pm and if all goes well, should be home around 10 pm after a very, VERY long day.
I’m ready to go home now, but we had a fantastic trip to China. The kids agree that they loved it too. It was very exotic for us, while offering comfortable and convenient travel between locations. Best of all was the wide range of things we saw and did – theme parks, mountains, shows, hiking, wildlife, history…
It was also eye opening and gave us lots to think about. Population control, pollution, government control of information, sustainability – these issues all came up time and again as we made our way around. To see cities home to more people than our entire country, to experience the smog firsthand, to be trapped behind the Great Firewall of China – these are great life lessons that I hope my kids will learn from their firsthand experience and that go to show the value of travel beyond the fun and entertainment.
We have now crossed 5 of the 6 parks off of the Every Disney Park bucket list. I have no doubt that we will head to Japan in the next few years to complete it. But, it won’t be our next trip. Our next adventure will take us to Morocco for spring break in 2019. Disney parks are awesome, but there is a big world out there, and we hope to see as much of it together as we can.
Cook Family Travels 