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Woke up this morning early and feeling hungry. Ate some of the nice kiwi's and persimmons that I bought at the market yesterday evening and then
decided to head out for a walk and possibly some early morning Dim Sum to go.
Found a place about a half mile away that was open and had nice hot looking steamers on their front porch (they were a full service restaurant, but I watched a number of
people come and go from the "togo counter" and figured this was a good sign.
Here is a picture of their front -
So I ordered some HarGow and some SiuMai with a small thing of hot sauce and walked it back to my hotel where I downed it all!
It's about 7:30am now -- a bit of a foggy morning as I look out my window. I am going to wait a little and then have "second breakfast" here at the hotel
in a few hours (if I can wait that long!)
Made it to the hotel buffet breakfast and had a small meal . Pineapple Juice, tea, Some beef stir fry noodles, a nice pastry, watermelon, pineapple, scrambled eggs and bacon.
Very "western" but just wanted to keep it simple.
.
After this quick meal I took a brief nap in my room and then decided that I would head out to the Kowloon side (Tsim Sha Tsui) via a ferry boat ride.
I took the MTR to Central and walked into the mall building, up a floor and over a very very long sky bridge to the pier. The ferry boat system
is super inexpensive for the short (less than 10 minute) ferry ride and is tied into he MTR octopus card system, so I just had to swipe my MTR
octopus card and get onto the boat. Here are some pictures and videos I took of the short boat ride.
Pano shot from boat--
Sha Tui)
This wasn't actually the boat I was on -- but was a nice old style boat I took a picture of
On the other end of the pier after getting off the boat I found a gelato store! Just had to have some as it was warm out.
I picked the green tea and red bean gelato.
I checked out the area to find out where to go to view the "Festival of Lights" show this evening. This is where they use the backdrop of the skyscrapers of Hong Kong Island for
an evening music and light show.
Then I walked towards the MTR station as I planned on using it to come back that evening for the show. On the way there I discovered the Peninsula Hotel, which is a famous hotel here in
Hong Kong. Very old-style/colonial english grand hotel. They have the green rolls royces and were part of the backdrop (with those Green Roll's) in the James Bond Man With the Golden Gun movie.
I went in and took this photo of one of their rolls:-
I checked with the Concierge and discovered that "High Tea" was available around 2pm (it was just around noon when I asked).
He advised me to "queue up" by 1:30pm in the lobby area. I decided this would be interesting
so planned on doing it.
In the mean time, to 'burn some time' I headed to the MTR station and went to the Jordan station to hunt down a
good wonton noodle soup place that I'd read about. Found it without too much trouble and ordered a nice small bowl of
Wonton Soup with noodles. The Wontons were quite good, the soup broth was very flavorful (definitely a shrimp based broth with a
bit of shrimpy smell to it). The noodles were the very very thin ones which were fine but just not my thing (I ate a few but they were not
exciting to me) so I just ate the wontons and drank the soup.
After this snack I headed back to the Peninsula Hotel and queued up in the lobby -- I got there just after 1pm and there was already a small line.
It was good that I got there so early as only a few of us were seated for Tea "on time" and the rest had a very long wait!
While waiting I noticed that there were a lot of Angels and Cherubs embedded in the walls, pillars and ceilings of the building.
I sure hope they were not Weeping Angels (Dr Who Reference)... Don't blink!
a cherub facing the tea tables
pilar - don't tick this guy off!
Roof looking down--
So I ordered the high tea with earl grey tea and here is the "three layer tray" I received:
Top layer had assorted dessert bites, middle layer had various
protein bites and the bottom layer had scones and two cookies.
I ate everything except the scones (too dry for me) and took the
two cookies on the bottom plate home to eat later. It was
actually quite filling but at ~$80 it was one of those experiences that
I'll probably only do once.
On my way out I noticed two interesting things I had to take pictures of.
One was a gingerbread house that "housed" some staff in the main lobby and the other
was Xul, one of Gozar's dogs from the original GhostBusters movie!
Headed back to the Excelsior Hotel for a much needed nap!
After waking up I headed out to dinner. I was going to try a place right next door that the concierge verified had
Shanghai Hairy Crab but when I got there they basically said "full", so I redirected to a different crab type and place that I'd
found that morning called "Under the Bridge Spicy Crab". I ordered their special "slightly hot" (one could go from mild to super hot)
crab -- just one. That was a good call as it was a huge plate. The prep was a very salty/garlicy/buttery crab and although I made a mess of
it I will say it was quite good. Similar to San Francisco's hard shell crabs.
After dinner (and some aggressive cleaning with kleenex to get some of the garlic and butter off my hands) I headed
over to the MTR and went back to the promenade to watch the light show. Here's a video of several minutes of the show.
It was nice, but not as spectacular as I had thought (mostly white lights with a few green laser beams). Still, a nice
evening out...
After the show I headed back to the hotel. Stopped at a stand for a quick helping of
egg waffles (the little bubble waffles I had when I first arrived -- they are a nice snack).
Got back and went to bed!
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