Monday, December 28, 2009

Hong Kong - Day 2

On day 2 we got out early and started exploring!

Hong Kong has a great public transportation system. The only hard part is that it is so crowded! We started our day on a trolley type car and headed to Victoria's Peak. Piper was already sacked out but Ben was excited!

This is the entrance to Victoria's Peak. Victoria's Peak is a mountain in Hong Kong which offers really great views of Hong Kong. We took a tram up the mountain which was probably one of the highlights of the whole trip for Ben. The tram was quite steep but very smooth and fortunately I didn't wet my pants.

The ride up.

At the top of the peak.


The view down!!

An historic tram car.

One of the view's of Hong Kong.

At the top of the peak they had two malls and a child's playground. Although I didn't wet my pants on the tram ride Ben unfortunately wet his on the playground. Apparently the bars daddy tried to get him to walk across scared him too much. Lucky for us the bathroom had a blow dryer for your hands so I spent the next 20 minutes drying out his blue jeans and socks. We already stuck out as it was and now we added to it by having a pant less three year old running around. Gotta love parenthood...

This was in the woman's bathroom. Too bad Ben didn't make it there in time...

He could have even used his own urinal!

As we left the playground we literally got attacked by a group of Hong Kong Jr. High students. They were on a field trip through a travel and tourism class. They LOVED Ben!



Now I know how celebrities feel. That is their teacher on the right with the Ivory coat on.

Ben was in Hong Kong school girl heaven!

Bubba Gump Shrimp Man

The view of Hong Kong from atop one of the malls. Due to the increased industrialization in China, Hong Kong gets a lot of smog. We were told that the factories shut down around Chinese New Year for a few weeks and then it is actually clear for about three weeks. Otherwise it is usually this hazy. So sad.

A view of the second mall.

I used the timer on my camera for this shot. Otherwise we could have paid the tourist people at the top about $20 to take our pic. I think it turned out pretty well for a timer.

Here comes the tram back up the hill. The tram is a bit expensive though so we chose to take a taxi back down.

Ben awake in the taxi back down.

Five minutes later he was completely sacked out!

After the peak we decided to head over to Kowloon, the more western area of Hong Kong, via the Star Ferry.

The Star Ferry is a pretty popular and well known way to get between Hong Kong Island and Kowloon across Victoria Harbor. In fact, this is where Grant wanted to propose to me six years ago.

View from the Star Ferry.


Talk about multi - kid tasking! Of course this brought more attention to us once again.

Inside the Peninsula Hotel. The Peninsula Hotel is a popular hotel in Kowloon. It is very beautiful and every day they have an afternoon tea that attracts tons of people. Maybe next time I will be able to go to afternoon tea...

The famous green Rolls-Royce in front of the hotel. This is a car owned by the hotel.

The cars of guests of the hotel.

In front of the hotel.

Very nice!

Another beautiful hotel in Kowloon. This hotel acutally used to house the city Police Department but was restored into a hotel and shopping area.

Wedding pictures being taken outside of the hotel. The bride and bridesmaids were beautiful!

Toys R Us!! This Toys R Us was awesome! It was just like a US Toys R Us unlike the Japan one! Hong Kong is an interesting area. You really don't see very many children, especially young children. This end of the mall was one of the only areas I actually saw kids. They had several upscale children's boutiques here and a Pizza Hut which always had tons of people waiting out front for a seat.