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

Gran Canaria - 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.

So for the letter G I decided to take Gran Canaria.

Fred and I have been there twice if not three times now and as with the other Canary Islands we really like it.


In December 2012  we decided we needed a break somewhere hot before we faced the onslaught of a cold Christmas in Northern Ireland so we looked for a last minute cheap holiday in the Canary Islands and chose Gran Canaria.

We had little idea of where we would be staying but ended up in a resort in the southern part of the island.

It was a lovely resort and we had a great time there apart from one thing.

Poor Wi-fi


Everyone ended up in the reception area of the resort sitting on the wide staircase or standing around or if you were very lucky you got one of the few seats there.

Food, rooms & outside facilities all great but the many teenagers there were not so happy trying to keep up with their online social life and Fred and I (not so young) did feel it in the early and late part of the evenings as we are and were then used to great wifi at home.

Yes I know we were on holiday and should have been forgetting about our ipads but we like to chill out reading and catching up on social media at night.



During that holiday most of the time was spent in and around the area of the resort but we did make a trip to Puerto de Mogan to see the Market there and another to Las Palmas the capital of the Island.



Las Palmas

We took a one day coach trip to the north of the Island to see this city which has a large harbour and nice streets.

One of the main sights is the Cathedral and it was one of our first stops (along with a coffee break).

The harbour area was lovely

A lot of the beaches in the Canary islands have "black" sand and here the sand was darker than we are used to with our lovely golden sandy beaches in Northern Ireland but not too dark.

As always the hills and mountains can be seen in the Canary Islands because they were formed by volcanic eruptions.

One thing not to miss, whenever you are in any of the Canary Islands, are the parrots and the parrot shows.  We have enjoyed these on each of the islands we have been to.

Another beautiful thing there was the sunrise so we made a particular effort to get up early and go to a part of the resort to get a great view.

Watching a sunrise in Gran Canaria.

I'm not usually good at getting pictures of the sunrise or the sunset even though we love to watch them but this was wasn't too bad.

That was the day we were heading off to the market at Puerto de Mogan which I would recommend as another day trip.  It was a relaxing day wandering around the market looking at the stalls and listening to some pan pipe music.  We even got a cd of the music these guys were playing and it's playing at home now as I write this post.

We were in Gran Canaria again a couple of times and the latest was in February 2017  when we also went to a resort in the southern part but further west round the coast.

Again a lovely resort and the Wi-Fi was better here but of course it was over 4 years later.

This time we took a short video of the view from our balcony.

The really great thing about the Canary Islands is that the temperatures are quite constant throughout the whole of the year so a visit at any time of the year will be warm if not nice and hot and we have never had a holiday there with much rain but it does happen.

So if you are thinking of a break in the cold winter time we would recommend Gran Canaria or any of the other Canary Islands.

Florida - A to Z of Places I have visited

I am going to write about some places I have visited and do them 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 been to Florida 3 different times.

In 1983 I flew over to the US from Northern Ireland on my own to join my husband who had been there for a work conference.

In 1995 our family of 5 drove down from our (then) home in Delaware to let our children experience Disney World and Sea World and a few other places before we would be packing up all our belongings and returning to live once again in Northern Ireland.

In 2017 - yes just last year - Fred and I returned to Florida for a week so that he could attend a church conference and I could sit at the pool at the hotel.


So some of the highlights of Florida for me have been the following:


St. Augustine

In 1983 we were driving from Jacksonville to Kissimmee (after my horrible experiences both at JFK Airport and at a motel in Jacksonville which could be a future Travel Blog Post) and stopped in St. Augustine to see the Alligators.  I mentioned this briefly in an earlier blog post The Alligator in the Ditch.


St. Augustine is a lovely old town and we were able to take a bit of time to see around a bit of it befor going to the Alligator Farm.

Photo Credit - Pixabay

Photo Credit - Pixabay

Photo Credit - Pixabay

I have to admit that I do not like alligators but we enjoyed the alligator farm but if I ever had the chance to go back to At. Augustine I would rather explore the town (old and new) rather than the farm again.



Kenedy Space Station


In 1995 one of the places we saw was the Kenedy Space Station and for anyone with a husband with an engineering background like mine this was a place not to be missed, our two boys who were 11 and 13 at the time also had a great time and our daughter and I quite enjoyed it too.

Photo Credit - Pixabay

Disney World


In both 1983 and 1995 there was a visit to Disney World and of course the first stop each time was The Magic Kingdom

Photo Credit - Pixabay

followed by Epcot Centre.

Photo Credit - Pixabay

My best memory of 1983 was Fred and I buying turkey legs to eat for lunch and not realising how big they would be.
They are enormous but also delicious - so if you are heading there try them out (if they still do them after all these years).



Sea World

In 1995 we also went to Sea World and Universal Studios which are also great for all ages.

Photo Credit - Pixabay

Photo Credit - Pixabay

Relaxing


2017 in Florida was so different for us.

No Alligator farm, no Space Station, no Theme Parks.

As well as relaxing by the pool I got to do some relaxing shopping because we found two nice large Craft Shops for me to wander around  -  just didn't get to buy all that I really liked because of having to travel back home but managed to get a few things I couldn't get in the UK.

How could you possible pick scrapbook paper from this multitude?

We also got to meet up with some friends from when we lived in Belgium for a lovely meal and chat one evening.


AND


We got to go to some restaurants we had loved when we lived in the US

Doggy Bag from The Ponderosa!

 so just had to take some selfies to make our kids jealous.

What do alligators and doggy bags have in common?