Thursday

Hong Kong - A to Z of Places I have Visited


I am writing about some places I have visited in alphabetical order.
Still wondering what I will do for the more unusual letters like Q and X etc. but maybe I will have a brilliant idea later.






I have always wanted to see Hong Kong but never thought I would.

Then it was given back to China and I definitely thought I would never visit it.

However when you have a daughter who decides to go to teach English in South Korea things change and your travel plans change immensely.


She went off in February 2013 and we started making plans to go to visit her that summer.  Then of course when we were going to go that far we decided to take a little trip from South Korea to Hong Kong because it would in the same area in the world.

So 4 days were allocated to Hong Kong in our itinerary and we could have enjoyed even longer.

You can read some more about our trip to Hong Kong here & here because I actually blogged while I was on that whole trip.


HOTEL

This was definitely not the best hotel we had during our whole trip in fact I think I may just be honest and say it was the worst.




This was the view from our hotel room.


I was depressed immediately because we really had not done enough research into Hong Kong to know the better parts of it.

The room was small but it was clean and as Fred always reminds me we were not going to be spending a lot of time in the hotel.

Hong Kong is made up of different parts - 
Hong Kong Island, The New Territories and Lantau Island.

We were staying on Hong Kong Island and it is very built up and by far the better area of it to stay in would is probably closer to the sea separating it from The New Territories as you can see in the screenshot from my ipad below.  The part of the Island where the hotel was is way off the map because the metro system does not extend on throughout Hong Kong Island.







EVENING VIEW

The first thing we did was to go see the skyline that is famous which is along the sea front.

Here is the view of the New Territories sea front taken from Hong Kong Island.




Fred managed to get a panoramic photo of it.






MORNING VIEW

The next day we went back to the sea front to see it in the daylight and walk along the Avenue of Stars.

We did not recognise many of the names of the stars but here is one that we did - Jackie Chan




It is a lovely walk but it was so sunny that we had to try to keep in the shade a lot of the time however I did come out for my action call by the director






BUS TRIP

We had a nice relaxing walk the following day as well, this time around a little beach area.

Not just so sunny so we were out longer.












THE CABLE CAR

I love Cable Cars and we have been on a few different ones in various parts of the world but none have been as long as this one.

We  travelled over bridges




and over the sea




and over the land



The route we took can be seen on the metro map just follow the orange line from Hong Kong Island to Lantau Island passing over part of the New Territories on the way.


This fantastic journey took us to an area up the hills that is all about a Buddah - I think, we didn't go up the steps to the Big Statue while we were there.




Fred found a very large tea pot in the village there which is just a tourist trap of shops.




It was a better temperature there so we quite enjoyed walking area the large area and seeing the colourful gardens.


THE PEAK

Well you cannot go to Hong Kong without going up the Peak.

This is what everyone says so we did but I didn't even know why or where we were going until we got there.


You must go up the Peak!

You queue up for a train that takes you up the hill to the peak and you wait and wait for your turn.




It is quite a pleasant place with showcases and pictures etc. on the walls to help you pass the time while you wait.




It is worth it for the view on the way up




to the Peak where we had something to eat and walked around the tourist attraction that is there with quite a few areas inside it and again a great view but the best view







is the one you get over the two skylines of Hong Kong.



Although we had a problem finding places to eat near where we were staying the food we did get was delicious but it does take more time out of your day than meals do in other places.


There were also a variety of markets on Hong Kong Island so if you are thinking of making this one of your holiday vacation spots then do look up about the markets which are on most days of the week.

We chose to go to only one but we spent a long time in it and I have to say the ladies selling on the stalls all seemed to be very helpful to my husband Fred.

We will not mention the incident about the belt will we Fred?

We still laugh about that now.








If you missed any of the previous places in this series just click on the Titles below:

A for Alicante
B for Bratislava
C for Calpe
D for Durbuy
E for Ennis
F for Florida
G for Gran Canaria