Last Day in Hong Kong
Hong Kong (7 million people) has been great. It all started with the free upgrade to the “executive suite” room with a fabulous view of the HK skyline across the harbor (we have photos) and just got better from there.
HK is a vertical city. The buildings climbs up from the harbor along steep hills and many of the buildings themselves are thin vertical skyscrapers–30-50-70 stories. These buildings combined with the steep hills make the city seem like it is reaching up, up, up. However, once amongst the hi-rises you find the shorter, older buildings which house many of the cities restaurants, bars and shops. These smaller, well-worn places are often side-by-side with an ultra-modern, high-end shopping malls. (And there are *lots* of these malls… you can’t walk anywhere without being routed to or through one. However, their super-air-conditioned interiors do offer a nice respite from the heat outside.)
Highlights include:
- Dim Sum brunch at Maxim’s Palace (an hour-and-a-half wait and worth it)
- Escalator ride from Central to the residential area known as the Mid-Levels (longest escalator in the world – 800 meters)
- Enjoying the hazy view from Victoria peak, including a part of a 2 mile walk among the lush and tropical park on top of the island. (The pollution here is terrible. For the last two days the sky is a sort of white, gauzy curtain. From Victoria Peak you could barely see the harbour below and you could not see the buildings across the harbor at all. According to the paper, this is not “normal” but becoming more common. When the wind is low, like this week, the smog can’t escape.)
- Drinks at a quiet bar in Soho (we think of it as the East Village of HK)
- View from the bathroom at Felix’s (the bathroom was the best part of this over-rated Philippe Starke designed restaurant).
- The “symphony of lights” light show–every night at 8pm the entire HK skyline is transformed into a “multimedia extravaganza” set to music that you tune into on the radio (given our upgraded room we had a primo view from the living room of our suite.)
We have a few more hours in the city, then we’re off to the mainland!
-peebo
ps – The computer at our hotel doesn’t allow file uploads, but if we can find a way we’ll post some pics later. (Or definitely when we get home.)