Getting through immigration was relatively quick and painless. Our bags were on the carousel as we came into baggage claim. We wheeled our luggage through the airport, groggy and thrown by the cacophony in the arrival hall.
Once inside the cab, we raced off. I was reading Twitter about the UVA game (and the upcoming Duke-VA Tech game), and checking email. Carol was texting with her brother Dave and her sister-in-law Benancia, both of whom had been taking care of her ill mother.
As we get close, suddenly an email pops up from our hotel. Since they had not heard from us, they cancelled our room and gave it to someone else! I was furious, not realizing that a hotel could just cancel a reservation.
Our friend John Passacantando likes to say, "it's not an adventure until the first thing goes wrong." Wow -- that didn't take long. Here we were in this massive city without a hotel. I was shaken, not stirred. I called, and they were not that sympathetic. I think they know they had done wrong, but didn't care.
Some of the screw-up was my fault. I had booked the room starting on the 28th, which is the day we fly. I had a brain fart and didn't take into account that we were not landing until the 29th because of the International Date Lane. Since we didn't show on the 28th, they felt they could give away our room. Yikes.
As the cabbie idled on a side street on Hong Kong island, Carol took command. She got on the phone, threaten the hotel (the Mira Moon) with bad Yelp and Trip Adviser reviews. They booked us a suite on the club level at their sister property, the Mira Hotel, for regular price.
After checking in late on the club floor, greeted with a complimentary glass of wine, we ordered room service and then went to bed. It was late, and we had lucked out. . .our hotel location in Kowloon put us right in the thick of the city.
Not a strategy I would recommend to anyone, but it all worked out in the end.
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