May 31, 2024
Treetop walk and Slide Avondale, Co. Wicklow
Today was bright and sunny, best weather I have had in Ireland so far. We had such a fun day and it started with a giant slide! About 2 years ago, I sent Edel a photo of this and asked her if she had heard about? ( she lives in Cork - we've been friends for years). Today we got to experience together.
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First you do the treetop walk through the forest and this leads to the giant slide. You don't pay to go down the slide, until your are at top and fully committed! All ages join in the fun. We asked one of the attendants, who told us the oldest child he knew to go down was 91 and just last week an 82 year old, celebrated her birthday going down! We were game and he joked that the boxes at the bottom where for those who didn't make it! Fear not!
First went Edel, then me! Weeeeeeeeeee! It lasted all of 17 seconds. And Edel gave me a 10 out of 10, for my fashionable dismount!
On Saturday August 29, 2026 we achieved another historic milestone on this circumnavigation of the World , we cruised into Hong Kong Harbor. Hong Kong is a special administrative region of China. The land encompassed by Hong Kong is confusing. It includes part of the southern coast of mainland China, just below Shenzhen, Hong Kong Island, Kowloon and the New Territories . Looking at a map helps, but the rules changed so many times! I asked my buddy Chat several times, to tell me if what I was looking at was the Hong Kong that the British had owned for years. The answer was never straight forward!
Ha Long Bay in Vietnam is one of those bucket list places I have had in my sights for years. It's the iconic picture in my mind's eye, whenever I think of Vietnam . We had made plans to go with 8 others on a brand new, swanky Red Dragon Junk boat for a harbor cruise and overnight stay, but sadly the weather did not cooperate the whole 4 days we were in port. No ships were permitted to sail, per the local government. Many of us were bummed! This is typhoon session and there was a lot of rain and high winds our first couple of days - we were hoping it would blow out the last day and we could at least do a day trip but no luck!
To get to the final stop on our Vietnam FUN Tour in Hue, we had our driver take us on the scenic route called the Hai Van Pass. This 3 hour drive took us back through Da Nang and then into mountains and along coast for what is generally a very scenic route. Unfortunately for us, it was mainly covered in clouds and fog.