Day 1 Hong Kong Central

Well we both woke up at 2 am, I fell back asleep, but Gill didn't and at 0430, I gave up and turned on the light. This was unfortunate, but had some benefits. One of the benefits was that Gill could call Alex and Sarah before they went to sleep and the other benefit was that we were bound to be really tired tonight - right?

After some tea, I went off to check out the gym and then we got ready for breakfast. We had decided the night before which restaurant to eat in because you always have to plan one meal ahead. We headed down to the cafe where we could order off of the menu. The gal at the desk tried to talk us out of it, but we said we really wanted to eat there and so she begrudgingly seated us.  

We both ordered the Chinese breakfast, which was huge and included tea, warm soy milk; congee, which is soupy rice with chicken and condiments of chili, croutons, fried peanuts, abalone (sea snail) and shredded ginger. We also had a mini basket of dim sum with two steamed buns (pork and egg custard), spinach dumpling, shrimp dumpling, and two combo dumplings with pork, shrimp and mushroom. The abalone looked like grey marbled jello and I hid this from view with my excess bowls. It was all very tasty and very filling.

After breakfast, we walked up to the base of Victoria Peak and took the funicular to the top.  The funicular is about a 1.5 kilometers long with 400 feet in elevation change. It is really steep in places. Once at the top, we walked a circuit around the top of the peak and enjoyed the views. Back at the funicular, we braved the crowds and went to the top where the people watching was just as good as the views.

We headed back down and were amazed at the huge crowd waiting to go up, we seemed to have timed it perfectly. We walked through Hong Kong park, which has a huge aviary and a pond filled with catfish and turtles, we dawdled through here as it was really pretty, but our goal was the tea museum.

We found this pretty easy, and it was free. It boasted that it was disinfected 6 times per day. It smelled like it was disinfected 6 times per day and it took me a while to get used to it and decide I could stand it. The museum showed the history of tea and had a very cool pottery collection from very old to very new. It was extremely quiet in there and we were on our best behavior, but toward the end I couldn't take it any more and started laughing like a hyena with tears running down my face. It was weird, not in a bad way, but in a weird way that seems incongruent with silence. There was a round white board at the end of the tour, which asked you to write your comments. Gill wrote 'clean' and I wrote 'tea makes me pee.' Gill made me leave at this point.

We headed back toward the center of town and stopped for a Starbucks and a pee - no tea. In the toilet, we encountered something we hadn't seen before and it was that the toilets and sinks were assigned to each establishment. So, Starbucks had one toilet and one sink and you were only to use those and no one else was supposed to - since we technically hadn't been anywhere yet, we used whatever was open and then I took a picture of this very strange situation, which completely freaked this gal out - I guess she doesn't think cameras belong in the toilet.  

Our next stop was Happy Feet Reflexology and we both got a 75 minute foot rub. Gill's therapist kept clucking and telling her to relax. Mine didn't speak English. It was heaven and dirt cheap; I suspect we will be back there. Relaxed and starved we went into the first place we could find and it turned out to be a 3 story diner of sorts, and we were the only white people in the joint. I ordered chicken and rice, Gill had beef and noodles and we shared Chinese kale. It came out at three separate times and they only gave us one set of chopsticks, but we still ate everything - you can't deter us when it comes to food.

Blog note: In all our travels, Gill and I have never been into selfies; however, over the last 3 days we have taken several every day. We ALWAYS find this very funny and I suspect they will continue. We were taking one on Victoria Peak when a guy asked me if I wanted him to take a picture, I said yes and he did and then he asked if I would take one of him and his male friend and I said of course. His friend said should we use your camera or ours and then they laughed and said, we are from Bollywood, we have to say that.