Today we went to Victoria Peak, to which we floated across the bay on none other than the Star Ferry--which was really nice. The trip across the harbor takes only about 10 minutes, if not fewer, and costs like 14 HK dollars, which is only about $2 U.S. Victoria Peak isn’t the highest in Hong Kong, but it offers an incredible view of the city from the top. To get to the peak we took a quaint little trolley car, which, at times, felt like a rollercoaster chugging to its summit. The trolley seemed to travel straight up--I could feel my spine digging into the wooden bench we were sitting on. When we got to the top, I was a little disappointed to find that the spectacular view was, of course, accompanied by another shopping mall. In fact, many of the tourists at the peak seemed to have made the climb specifically for the shopping, if not to grab their token snapshot of the cityscape down below.
After this sadly generic experience at the famed Peak, Abby and I made our own way down, purchasing sandwiches for a picnic at a nearby vacated park (in which I fell asleep for who knows how long), and then we hiked the entire 500 meters back down to the bottom. Just before reaching sea level, we came upon the island’s zoo and botanical gardens. We took a rest near a playful leopard before sauntering through parts of the gardens.
Our knees were creaking by the end of it, so we went to a fancy-pants hotel for hot chocolate and tea, then went for a stroll through Central haphazardly looking for some restaurant, but instead we found a nice place to drink wine and watch a cute and scuzzled mamma dog dart around for scraps of food. It was around 9 when we realized we hadn’t eaten dinner yet, so we headed over to this great restaurant nearby, whose light fixtures were made of old bronze bird cages (like the ones we saw at the Yuen Po Street Bird Market). I can’t remember what we ate, but it was really good. We stayed drinking Tsing Tao beer out of bowls until they were closing up.
1 Comment for this Entry
Val
The first picture is great...I think it DOES give some sense of what you saw....Whoops, I wasn't there! That was a cool shot of the restaurant, too.
Wednesday, January 24, 2007 - 00:46 AM
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