After 3 days of mind-numbingly boring blog entries, the fans have gotten their way and Alan is doing it today. I don’t know about the fans but certainly, I got my way.
For the first time since we left home all those days ago, we were able to have a sleep in this morning. Wow, got up at 9am instead of 8.30 but, I guess, technically it is a sleep in. Ok, so technically we could have slept in on most days on the ship, but we wouldn’t want to have missed breakfast. With no such concerns here, we enjoyed the extra shut eye. Our hotel room here in Hong Kong is very nice and spacious. And the best part is that I’m sleeping on the sofa bed in a different room to Sarah and her dad, so I didn’t hear them snoring at all last night. Bonus! That goes the same way for us, yay.
The plan for today was to do an open-top bus tour of the city, so we headed off toward the ferry terminal around mid morning. There are always ticket sellers on just about every corner, so we stopped and bought our 2 day bus tickets from one of them.
After walking to the pier, we saw that the Queen Elizabeth was docked where our ship had been yesterday. The only difference is that the Queen Elizabeth is about 400 times the size of our Seabourn Quest. We went around to the other side of the cruise line terminal and there was the Seabourn Pride, which had arrived early this morning. It’s half the size of the Quest. It was so cute. We later ran into some people from the ship who said that others who had gotten off the Quest yesterday were getting on the Pride today. Strange considering it is going back to Singapore almost exactly the way we came.
We got on the ferry, using free tickets as part of the bus tour, and on the way across the harbour talked to a couple of English people who were here on the Queen Elizabeth. Apparently it holds 2000 guests, whereas our ship had 400 on board. No wonder it’s so massive.
Soon we were across the harbour and made the short walk to the bus stop. We had planned to do the green loop first, but since the red loop bus was already waiting there, we got on. We took our seats on the open air top deck and plugged in our headphones for the running commentary. Sarah couldn’t get hers to work properly. She had probably plugged it into the wrong hole or something like that. I’m not the technically challenged one in the family.
It was cool and breezy, but not overly unpleasant (he says that now but as soon as the bus started he was zipped up to the nose) as we made our way around the lower part of Hong Kong Island. The commentary was very helpful in pointing out all the places of interest and things we should take photos of. Below includes a photo of a building that looks like koalas hugging trees.
We decided to get out at stop 9, Lan Kwai Fong, which is a district with many restaurants, bars and nightclubs. It was lunch time and we were hungry having not eaten breakfast so we looked around for somewhere suitable. I knew that the Hard Rock Cafe was somewhere around here but not sure exactly where. After about half a dozen paces up the street, I just happened to look right and saw a Hard Rock sign. We walked down a few staircases and hey presto, there it was. How good was that! You started walking the other way and Dad and I turned you around. It was us who led you in the right direction.
Lunch was awesome, as it always is whenever we eat at any Hard Rock. Sarah and I have been to plenty of them around the world, but this was her fathers first time there. I think he was suitably impressed. Who wouldn’t be. Salads for us and soup for Dad to start, then salmon and pasta for Alan and ribs for Dad and me, plus unlimited soft drinks for us and a beer for Dad, all for A$50.
After lunch, we walked back up the stairs to the bus stop. Unfortunately, a bus was leaving as we got there, but we shouldn’t have to wait too long as they’re scheduled to come every 20 minutes.
About 45 minutes later, the next one finally arrived. The traffic must have been very heavy due to the narrow streets, construction and large amount of vehicles on the roads. We went to get on the bus, only for Sarah’s dad to decide that was the perfect moment to sit down in the gutter. Better to fall back than fall forward although it took three of us (a delivery guy, another woman and me) to get him right again. After finding his feet again we got on the bus, although he decided to stay downstairs this time.
It didn’t take us long to make it back to the ferry terminal, where we got off the bus. I hurt my ankle coming down the stairs from the top deck. Owie!!! It’s nothing new, it’s an old problem stemming from my broken ankle while playing soccer years and years ago. It just means I always need to take care on stairs, and why you’ll often see me with a slight limp when walking up stairs or a hill.
We had planned to get on the green line bus now, but since we had an unexpected 45 minute delay, we thought we should return to our hotel as Sarah’s dad had a pants fitting at a tailor at 5 pm which he didn’t want to miss. Plus we have a 2 day bus ticket, so we can do it tomorrow anyway.
The ferry ride back took no time as usual. Sarah and I thought a thickshake from McDonalds might be nice since we’ve had precious little milk on the trip. My bones must be getting brittle at the lack of calcium. Sarah’s dad went back to the hotel while I bought us 2 iced chocolates. They were delicious! When I came out of McDonalds, Sarah was talking to 2 Americans from our ship. Then, on the way back to our hotel, we ran into David and Graham. They’re Australians who we had spoken to many times on the ship.
Our bus tickets include a night tour of another area of the city. Sarah and I thought we’d go and do that, but her dad decided to stay in. We walked to the ferry pier once again. The sidewalks were packed with people now, as it was evening peak and a lot of people were going home from work.
We took the ferry across the harbour again and went to the bus stop. There was a bus there and we went to get on but the driver said no. We said we wanted to night tour but he laughed and said back over the harbour where we had just come from. We were confused as the map said this was the start point for the tour. We asked the driver several times, but he was rude and unhelpful.
After standing around a bit lost for a while, we got back on the ferry and returned to our hotel. Once back here, we figured out that the girl had actually written 6.15 on our tour map, so when we turned up at the bus stop at 7 pm, obviously we had already missed it. Oh well, tomorrow night. The details of the loops states that the night tour starts at 7pm which is obviously the same as 6.15pm here. Weird.
There is a light and laser show in Hong Kong every night at 8 pm, so Sarah and I went up to the top floor of our hotel to watch it out the window. It was ok, and we took a few photos. Not bad photos actually, taken through a window and under my coat so as to block out the reflecting of the hallway lights in the window.
Even though we had all eaten a very big lunch, we thought we’d go out and sample some local cuisine for dinner. Sarah’s dad said he had seen some Chinese restaurants while walking to the tailor earlier, so he took us to where they were.
We went into one joint and sat at a booth. We had to move to a bigger booth because the chairs weren’t big enough for a bunch of fatties like us. In any case, the place was too difficult for simpletons like us to figure out, so we left and went to another place next door, a Macau food restaurant.
It was upstairs and we took an extremely old and dodgy lift up. I wasn’t sure it would make it. We went in and sat down. This place looked more promising and we found some pretty decent looking stuff on the menu. We ordered lots of food and it was pretty good. We stuffed ourselves silly but still didn’t finish it all. The view out the restaurant window was crap. For the entire meal I was looking at the Manchester United Bar and Restaurant across the street. Stupid sucky Manchester United!
Back to the hotel for the night. My ankle is hurting, but hopefully it will be better by tomorrow and we’ll tackle these tour buses once again. Maybe we’ll even be clever enough to get to the night tour in time, although that could be pushing things a bit far.
A bit of trivia … they use bamboo as scaffolding. Bloody scary!!
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