A Day in Hong Kong

We spent all day Friday walking the streets of Hong Kong. We were actually in Kowloon, which sits on one side of Victoria Harbor, with a commanding view of Hong Kong island across the harbor. The view during the day and at night was impressive, if you had the right viewpoint. From the streets, you can see nothing. The streets are the most amazing urban canyons I have ever seen, with narrow streets, even narrower sidewalks, and 20 or 30 story buildings rising up beside the sidewalks. When we tried to walk three abreast (Deb and I holding Abigail's hands), we took up the entire sidewalk from the side of the building to the road.

Our hotel room on the 19th floor offered a great view of the city, with the picture below taken from the hotel window.

Our hotel was right on the waterfront, and a large promenade along the water allowed for a nice walk along the city, and a great view of Hong Kong Island at night.

The next few pictures were taken on the waterfront promenade

The Friend Siblings in Hong Kong

Abigail, assuming her desired role as director

We arrived here in Hong Kong late last night (Thursday). The hotel is right across from the train station so we just had to drag our luggage across the street. When I made the hotel reservations, I was told this was one of the more reasonable hotels in the area (without running all over Kowloon). We are finding out that it is one of these posh business hotels where the room is expensive and all the other essentials (like Internet access) is an extra charge. The woman at the front desk tried to sell us an upgraded package which included breakfast, Internet access, and a bunch of other stuff for "only $150 per person" [Hong Kong dollars, or about US$20]. I was told this was a great deal because just to get breakfast was HK$180.

As she was listing off the great benefits of this special package, she looked at Abigail and asked if our children were noisy. We serve a business clientele, she told me, and so the children need to be kept quiet in the restaurant. So I just got told that I'm not welcome unless I can keep a lid on the kid.

And, by the way, this special package is only available if we pay for two day's worth. "I only need one day," I told her. "We need to leave the hotel before breakfast is even served on the second day." She was already writing the figures down on the hotel tab and I was seeing some big numbers add up in a hurry, so I told her we would pass on the special. If we're not welcome, we'll spend our money somewhere else. We'll see if we can forage on our own for meals.

And forage we did. We had a not-so-special breakfast at a train station restaurant, and then Deb and Josh and David went out scouting the city. Abigail and I stayed back because she was complaining that she wasn't feeling well. This is one of those things what we have to learn about her, especially since we cannot communicate yet: is she not feeling well just because she doesn't feel well, or because she doesn't feel like walking?

Deb and the boys returned later to say they had found a bakery which made some excellent cheese bread, and they found some sort of chicken/ham thing at a grocery store deli which was underground. Leave it to Deb to scout out a good deal. The chicken/ham things were fantastic, and we bought more of them later on for the next morning's breakfast.

Abigail is not a bread fan, but she did eat the chicken/ham thing and an orange. That's one english word she knows, "gorange". Oranges have been a staple for us during this trip.

Abigail does like pizza. On our way back to the hotel, Josh, our 17-year-old Hong Kong navigator, was leading us through the city streets, and found a Pizza Hut on the second floor of one of the bazillion buildings there. I know this sounds like we're wimping out, going all the way to Hong Kong and eating at a Pizza Hut, but our diets have been so crazy the last few weeks and we have had two of us get violently ill, so something familiar was a welcome sight. And it's something we all like.