Well, the enormous lead up has finally led to Dad and I fleeing the country. Sorry everyone, but no more business cards until I get back now. I don't think the Grizzly's have a printing press.For those of you who don't already know, I slipped on the wet tiles at home while testing one of our new lenses and broke my tailbone and cracked my skull last Friday. This led to just a touch of anxiety about sitting in what we normally foresee as a thimble holder of a aeroplane seat for somewhere in the vicinity of nine hours. But ... to my surprise ... and delight, the plane seat provided by China Airlines in Business Class is much larger than the equivalent seat on a Qantas Business Class flight to New Zealand for our honeymoon a couple of years ago. I FIT IN IT!
To be honest, the Flight with China Airlines was wonderful. Yes we are in Business Class, but these seats cost half what Qantas and Air New Zealand charge for a Business Class seat. But they are not half the airline. Both Dad and I are very impressed so far. The fully electric seats are roomy and comfortable, with me not even being able to touch the seat in front, as I have that much leg room. The food was truly wonderful. From aperitifs of marinated mushrooms and capsicum with curried vegetable patty, to starters of smoked salmon, tasty salads, main courses of grilled black bean Barramundi, rice, vegetables and bread, plus some lovely fresh fruit and scrumptious Orange Cheesecake Mousse Thingie with Chocolate Scrolls. We accompanied this with our choice of just about any beverage imaginable, but decided to skip on the Baileys for now and just had a nice French Merlot Blend.
The rest of the flight was relaxing with many hours to watch IRONMAN, catch a couple of Z's power up the laptop, dump a few photo's, check the plane power source was working and wait for it ... EAT AGAIN!
Yes, they decided that the 5Kg's of food they stuffed into us around lunch time wouldn't be enough to keep our sleepy souls from starving, so they served up a lovely bowl of Asian seafood soup, with our choice of add ins like asparagus, onion, chili, parsley and a yellow vegetable that so far remains nameless. Needless to say, we were both stuffed to the eyeballs, but the Taipei government was nice enough to give us a 5Klm walk to immigration in what seemed like the longest airport terminal in the world. Praise the lord for "Travelators"!!!
To speed up the ending of this BLOG, we were picked up in a week old BMW 740 Series Limo "NICE" and then sat in peak hour traffic for an hour and a half listening to the radio reports informing us that the Typhoon that was due to hit that night or the next day was expected to dump ... wait for it ... about 1m of water on the city and ... how surprising, some areas may experience flash flooding. Damn, if Brisbane got a metre of water in a night, we'd all be going to work in a kayak.
The hotel and staff are as you would expect for a 5 star hotel ... very, very, very, accommodating! I will now point out that the Riviera Hotel is "All Boarded Up" ... a comforting thought knowing we were planning to spend Saturday shopping in Camera Street Taipei. Might think about taking a Poncho with me tomorrow. Hmmm ... that'll be fun in 30 degree heat and 95% humidity won't it?
Well, that's enough for today ... time to go have some breakfast ... wonder if they have those deep fried scorpions here?
WANT MORE PHOTOS?
If you would like to see some more photo's of what we've seen so far, please visit our PICASA Web Albums page!
Keep smiling ...
Darren & Keith Gardiner
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