Travel Journal

What a great day in Hong Kong!! We only had one day and had to keep telling ourselves "We'll be back, we'll come back here!" because we were so tempted to run around and try to see everything. It is such a fantastic city - great energy, beautiful views of mountains and skyscrapers, and warm climate (at least on the weekend we were there!).

Our hotel room was on 21st floor with grand views of the city skyline - it was so much fun to wake up, open up the curtains, and survey the skyline from our bed! After breakfast, we leisurely wandered through some of the shopping streets in our hotel's neighborhood, busy with many people shopping on a Saturday morning. It was so much fun to just wander through grocery stores and down entire blocks of cute little shops.

Due to some great advertising in the subway, we discovered the Hong Kong Flower Show was taking place in Victoria Park (kind of like their Central Park) that weekend - entrance was cheap and the flowers were amazing. It was so cool to see all the familiar flowers in full bloom, and quite a few exotic flowers we had never seen before. The colors and varieties were amazing! We don't usually "do" flower shows, so we said we would go in, take a few pictures and leave - only to find ourselves almost 2 hours later still enjoying the colors and smells of the show!

We also spent a fair amount of time enjoying the airconditioning in a few of the Hong Kong malls - we ate a tasty Japanese meal in one mall, Tim purchased some great shoes in another, and we sampled the Chinese music at a Hong Kong record store at yet another.

In the late afternoon, we wandered through Central, and made our way to the Central escalators, the longest series of escalators in the world. They go down in the morning rush hour and up in the evening to take people back to their apartments in the hills. It took us a good 30 minutes of escalatoring to get to the end - passing great neighborhoods, shops, and restaurants along the way. And yes, the handrail going faster than the foot belt is still a problem here too!

Our nighttime plan was to take a few night photos of the skyline and enjoy our last night in China. We had very high hopes of taking the Peak Tram up to the top of Victoria Peak and catching a few pictures of the city through the clouds. However, even after 45 minutes of patient waiting, the clouds never did part and all we could see were a few close-by street lights. So disappointing, but it was cool to watch the clouds blow over the top of the observation deck!

Oh well, we did catch some great glimpses of the skyline on the way down. We quickly made our way across the bay - it was getting really late! - and found a great photo spot on the promenade along the harbor. We oohed, aahed, and shot our memory card full! It was so hard to get ourselves to start moving back to our hotel - as soon as we got back, we'd have to pack and start getting ready for the long journey home. It did help when they started turning out the building lights (around 11:00 p.m.), it was like Hong Kong was going to sleep. Goodbye China!