Loungin'

The best thing about the Grand Hyatt Taipei was the breakfast buffet, which was included with the IBM room rate. The restaurant had three stations where you could order fresh cooked food: a Japanese style breakfast, an eggs & omelets station, and a waffles & pancakes station. They also had a separate fresh fruit area, a cold meats & cheeses area (including smoked salmon and brie), and a breads & pastries section. I ate big breakfasts while staying there, and I missed it this morning.

I left Taipei at 5:15am, before the restaurant opened. I anticipated that last night, and ate a big dinner. Turns out I probably shouldn't have done that, because they served us a good meal during the first flight.

Now I'm sitting in the Cathay Pacific business class lounge in the Hong Kong airport, between flights on my way to Beijing. I had heard rave reviews of the Cathay lounge in this airport, but really it's not that much better than any of the other lounges I've been in. It does have one unique feature: some of the seats have a personal TV that you can tune to a station of your choice, and listen to using headphones. I found an open seat and set up my PC, then fired up the little TV. It lets you input your departing flight info, and will warn me when I need to leave to get to the gate on time. I had it tuned to CNN, and the sound was distorted, so I changed to Bloomberg. Pretty cool.

Next post will be from Beijing.