Packing up, checking out and leaving the bags with the hotel at around 8.30am until we need to pick them up around 3pm to go Hong Kong International for the flight to leave by 19.10.
We decided to just walk down the waterfront on the other side of Victoria Park and slowly wander towards Central. Beautiful and cool morning, not a single cloud.
Construction work everywhere and they are now moving the whole freeway from Causeway Bay to Central underground and partly under the water. It will be replaced by a waterfront promenade and various park and water activities at ground level. There were some pictures and overviews of how it will look once finished and it will be truly amazing. Again, where are the visionaries of Sydney? Why can't we do something similar there. That's right, feasibility report, then politicians announcing a "blue print" or "master plan", debate it and then... park the report on a shelf to gather dust and do it all over again. Today's rant completed!
What the...?
Sign board along the waterfront. Swiss watch, Sydney motif, in Hong Kong...
We walked until we reached the Wan Chai sports and pool complex. Very nice looking down on the pool and seeing Saturday morning swimming coaching, just like in Sydney, but with 20 lanes across the 25 metre wide pool rather than 10 lanes of 50 metres. Makes sense for coaching.
We realised we were next to the AXA building and Di remembered that Lisa Lovich in Melbourne who used to work here at AXA, mentioned that there is a good coffee shop at the back of that building. We wandered around towards the back and found Zambra coffee shop. A quick phone call to Lisa in Melbourne confirmed that this is the right place (it was) and we were in.
Note Hans in the background, being silly again...
Pretty good coffee (for China), best so far this trip, and cinnamon snail to go with it. Thanks Lisa.
We then caught the Star Ferry from Wan Chai to Kowloon and then back to Central - just because it's a beautiful day and we love the Star Ferries.
Off at Central and tried to quickly escape the exclusive shopping district - all Prada, Chanel and Armani daaahhhling... Too much, just too much.
Walked up Wyndham street and then to Battery Path to find St Paul's Cathedral. Lovely.
The Royal bench below...
Then onto Hong Kong Park. We've said it before but parks here are done really well and this was no exception. Ponds had terapins and fish, and lovely fountains and paths.
Stumbled onto Flagstaff House - now the Tea Museum. We wanted to see the building but also found the tea exhibits and information interesting. Ended up buying a lovely chinese tea set at the gift shop - hand made and painted. Very nice souvenir for the home.
Next to Hong Kong Park is Fountain Park. This one is probably used a lot by the kids in summer.
Then down into Admiralty district and onto the back streets of Wan Chai. Queens Road and some more market areas. We were looking for lunch and found King Ludwig's Bier Halle but with only $200HK remaining we could not really afford it. Instead, we found a local place called Delicious Good Value restaurant - and it was definitely good value. For $79HK we both ate full meals and had hot lemon tea, which was really good. BTW, their email address was value_good@hotmail.com.
The last walking stretch back to the hotel was no fun for us. We don't like shopping and this district is packed with shops and browsing chinese people and since this is a Saturday, it seemed to drag on as we made our way back.
Now our final 20 minutes at the hotel with free wifi so our final blog for this trip (we think). We realised we've walked quite a bit today which is pleasing before spending 9 hours on a plane.
Bye for now. Over and out for this blog. Will be continued in a not too distant future... :-)
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