Day 38 - Saturday May 27, 2017 - Hong Kong to Melbourne

Time to head home today. We have an 8.30 pm flight to Sydney and then on to Melbourne. Though her throat is a bit better, Anne-Margaret is feeling less than stellar this morning; neither of us slept very well so by the time we made it down to breakfast, it was nine o’clock. Whether because we were later or because it’s Saturday morning – or both – breakfast was busy.

We don’t need to check out until 2 pm, so will probably while away the morning reading and packing etc.

Eventually the time comes to leave. It’s a beautiful day out, blue sky and the sun shining – a perfect day to go up to the Peak (except, probably, for the crowds). The shuttle bus to the Kowloon MTR Express station eventually arrives though, rather than the usual smaller bus, it’s a full size coach. It can’t get in to the hotel driveway so stops down the street, with us trailing after it. This particular shuttle bus stops at seven hotels – it’s good coming in because the Holiday Inn is the first stop but of course that works against you going back as we have to go round the other six hotels before heading to the MTR station. It’s Saturday afternoon in Kowloon so the traffic doesn’t help matters but we’re not in any rush and we get there soon enough.

One of the good things about taking the MTR Express to the airport is the in-town check in at the MTR station. We don’t have bags to check but, even so, getting the check in done before you head to the airport is a bonus. We don’t have to wait long for a train and both security and immigration are pretty quick. Anne-Margaret stops to buy a tee-shirt for Vincent before we head to the Qantas lounge.

We haven’t been in this lounge before as we’ve always used the Cathay first class lounges in Hong Kong. Now we no longer have our exalted oneWorld status that gave us first class lounge access, we have to take what we can get — which, of course, is no real hardship and very much a ‘first world’ problem. The lounge is similar in overall style to the Qantas Singapore lounge, which was opened before it, and which we’ve been in several times. As we were early, it was pretty quiet but no doubt it will fill up as departure time for the Oz flights approaches.

Off we go. The flight departs from gate 27; we leave the gate on time but have to wait a little bit for our takeoff slot. Supposedly a ‘quick’ flight time should have us in to Sydney a little early, around 7.45 am.