Little Black Guidebook

Today we walked around Hong Kong. Weather was in the 90s with high humidity. I made my own walking tour with Google maps, but I found it useful to look at some others done by professionals while putting mine together. Mine is customized for what is open on this day of the week and our taste. Here’s what we did today:

1000 Hong Kong Museum of History – takes about 2 hrs

1200 Snack at a local pastry shop, yum

12:30 Star Ferry to Central, Only an 8 minute ferry, but great views

12:45 Central Walking Tour including: Legislative building, St Johns Cathedral, garden, Court of Final Appeals, Bank of China building, HSBC, statue park, Battery road

1:45 Trolley to the Peak

1400-1515 Lunch @ Pearl on the Peak (Australian restaurant with great views, save the cost of a trip to the Peak Tower and put it towards your lunch, you get a discount here if you show them your trolley ticket)

1515-1530 Observation deck of Peak Tower

1530-1545 Trolley back down

1545-1600 Walk through Hong Kong Park- I wish we had more time to go to the Aviary here, but we did see a lot of greenery as we walked down the path on the elevated sidewalks. it felt like we were going on a sidewalk between tree houses to:

1600-1700 Tea appreciation class next to Teaware Museum – It was a real shame we missed the tea ware museum itself. The plan was to go there before our class, but lunch took forever. From our quick glance through it looks like this free museum would take less than 30 minutes. The tea appreciation class was awesome though. We learned how to make and serve 6 different varieties of tea. I never knew there was so much involved and what variety there was. I told hubby they were making me a tea snob. This class is free through the Hong Kong tourism bureau.

1700-1800 Biological and Zoological Garden. since the aviary in Hong Kong Park was closed by the time our tea appreciation class was over we went over to the free Biological and Zoological Garden next to the trolley entrance. While it didn’t have the 600 varieties of birds that the aviary has, it did have a ton of American flamingos which I always enjoy along with a lot of other unidentifiable birds. Unforunately the botanical gardens themselves closed at 1700 so we missed that.

MRT metro back to Kowloon – rush hour fun

1900 Sam’s Tailors on Nathan Road, famous for clients like Margaret Thatcher, US presidents and celebrities, Hubby will have 2 custom tailored shirts by 5pm tomorrow, sweet, an for less than the cost of 1 regular non-tailored one from JC Penneys.

1930 dinner at a little cafe

Hong Kong Walking Tour, complete with maps from Frommers

Hong Kong Walking Tour: The Heart of Central from National Geographic

Hong Kong Walking Tour: From Wan Chai to Happy Valley from National Geographic

Hong Kong Walking Tour: Sheung Wan Area from National Geographic