And then Central! It's very crowded, and I'm hoping that some of the people are just there because it was Sunday so they were shopping, since around the building where I'll be working it was rather insane.
This is the causeway between my building & World Wide Plaza (sic), which seemed to be far more crowded by about 200x than the upscale malls I encountered later. Of course this could also be because every other store was a Hermes or Bulgari or Armani. I found myself missing JC Penney's!
Of course, then I got lost in the labyrinths of upscale stores underneath the office buildings as I tried to make my way to Chater Garden. There are Exit signs everywhere, but they all are fire exits, which you don't know until the second door, and then there's MAYBE 2 exits to the street from each building. So while I wandered aimlessly, I found a small spot to rest & get a drink. Apparently specially made for sweaty Americans like me!
From here it was down Chater Rd which happened to have an antique and cool car show going on, and down to another public park.
Chater Garden was very big on trees, and one of the common threads is how much Hong Kong residents seek out shade, so I suppose this makes sense. I felt better walking around seeing even the locals sweating and with cloths to wipe off their faces. I also had the brief touring help of two enthusiastic locals above who were quite insistent about being photographed.
From Chater Garden I looked at the map (yes, I brought one despite my reluctance, but hey, I look like a tourist anyway), and realized I was close to Hong Kong Park, the biggest park on Hong Kong Island. Sweet! This was the Tai Chi Pavilion, a phenomenon I found yesterday in the Botanical Gardens too.
From here it was on to the aviary!
Oh by the way, I finally found the zoom on my camera, which is why the pictures aren't "Hey, see that blob there?" which was a significant portion of my pics from yesterday.
Apparently, Hong Kong Park is such a popular place to get married they have an entire facility for it, called the Cotton Tree Drive Marriage Registry, and there was a wedding going on while I was there! I was going to take a picture of the wedding party, but I didn't want to be the creepy stranger who appears, so I just took a picture of the car parked downstairs instead since it was too cute.
There were some lovely artificial lakes, a conservatory, and waterfalls nearby where I suppose the bride & groom usually take their wedding pictures. Here was also a restaurant where I ordered a Thai omelette, which sounded good. It arrived, I cut into it, and was SO tempted to take a picture except that it wouldn't do justice to how fantastic it tasted. Very thin egg covering pork, prawns, carrots, peas, onions, mushrooms, tomatoes, in a thick Thai tomato sauce. Delicious! Like a pork pot pie in a thin omelette but without the cream, and tomato instead!
From here I went to the Tea Ware Museum which was incredible, but I'll follow up with a separate post since I have so many pictures of the weird & wonderful and not at all historic tea ware that's being created today in Hong Kong!
Finally, I went to the conservatory, and took this snap of scarlet begonias. I was going to make a Grateful Dead/Sublime joke, but unfortunately the way the sun fell you can't read the tag. Oh well, they're pretty anyway.
I left the park after that, and walked to something called Pacific Place which I'd never heard of but I was almost there. Turns out it was another upscale mega-mall that I almost got lost in but then made a mad dash for the first door I saw leading to the street, and cabbed it back here since my hotel is in the Midlands, and that would be a giant uphill hike. I've already been walking since about 9:30 and it was about 1:30 with only a short break.
So back for a short dip in the pool (pics also to follow), shower, and I've been updating. Time to hunt the area for a restaurant tonight, since I saw a few on Mosque St. I want to try, and then bed to get ready for my first day of work tomorrow! Obviously fewer pics to follow since cubicles = not that interesting, but it was a great day today!
No comments:
Post a Comment