Friday September 11, 2015
We finally rolled out of bed at the uber swank Lanson Place Hong Kong and hit the streets at 9am. Lots of tourist activities are planned today and our first stop was the Peak. We rode the MTR to Central Station and grabbed some breakfast in the station before heading outside to enjoy it. We quickly ate our breakfast at Chater Garden before figuring out how to get to the Peak Tram Lower Terminus. Luckily Lanson provided us with the WiFi hub and we had full access to map apps to get us where we needed to go.
The Tram ride up to the top was as fun as always – its one of my favorite things to do in Hong Kong even if it is touristy. At the Peak, Daniel and I wandered around and took photos and did a live Periscope from the summit. It was a bit cloudy but at least you could see all the way to Kowloon from the Peak. After we had our fill of fun at the top, we set off to the ferry terminal for our trip to Macao.
The terminal was easy to find and we found the ticket counter and splurged for a first class ticket. This apparently entitled us to a free meal on the trip to Macao and was not something we were expecting. The meal wasn’t something that I recognized so it didn’t get used – on the way back we will make sure just to get a regular seat. It was a smooth trip across the Pear River Delta and we arrived at the terminal in Macao. Not really having a plan we stopped at the information desk to get some ideas. At first we were going to just take a regular bus into town but it was a mess so we switched it up and took a casino bus to the Grand Lisboa casino which was in central Macao.
We went strolling around Macao looking at the different shops and sights and ended up at Senado Square. We were getting hungry by this time and decided to head to the big Casinos. We walked back to the Grand Lisboa and decided to just take a taxi to the Venetian. Exiting the taxi, it was like we were magically transported to Las Vegas as this Venetian looked exactly the same. It was fun walking around looking at the casino floor and Daniel tried his luck at some slots, but alas we didn’t hit the jackpot.
We headed to the shops and ate at the food court – pasta and pizza naturally. Once we had our fill of the Venetian, we found the bus back to the ferry terminal. This time we opted for the cheaper ticket and it was just fine. Some people make round trip reservations for the ferry and we opted for two one ways since we didn’t want to be stuck in Macao longer than we wanted. There is the risk that the ferries will be full and you’ll have to wait a bit for one, but today we were fine.
Back in Hong Kong, we headed for Mong Kok. I remembered from my last trip in 2005 that it was a great place to shop and we were not disappointed. Daniel was still looking for some Nintendo items so we went looking for the Toys R Us at the Olympic Center. Along the way we stopped briefly in the ladies market to look at all the different stalls and shops. We didn’t find anything of interest at the Olympic Center so we decided to head to Canton Road to see more shops.
We took the MTR to Kowloon Station so we could walk the rest of the way to Canton Road, but we were unaware of the massive construction project at the station and it was a hot mess getting orientated to go in the right direction. Turns out they were building the massive railway station to connect directly to Mainland China. Who knew? We finally reached the blessed air conditioned Apple Store on Canton Road and took out sweet time to cool off before heading out again.
Our last stop was along the Kowloon shoreline and the Avenue of the Stars to see the light show and get some photos of Victoria Harbour at night. Exhausted after a long sweaty day, we then set off to Causeway Bay to go back to the Lanson and to bed.
