Little Black Guidebook

I ran into Pauline Frommer’s blog “Traveling Light” on WeightWatchers.com of all places. Its all about how travel took its toll on her waistline (something I can empathize with). I didn’t know who she ways and then it hit me, duh, Frommers, like the guidebook. A quick google later and I stumbled upon this free book, “Spend Less, See More.” Its a 15 page pdf. I especially liked the tips dealing with contract of carriage as its a problem I’ve run into and not known how to deal with when I’m delayed and frustrated.

The one nice thing about having a December Birthday is that you only have to make one wishlist a year. Not so nice is getting Birthday presents wrapped in snowman paper, but oh well, it’s the thought that counts. Anyway, enough ranting over December Birthdays, this year hubby did good and wrapped up a  Moleskine City Notebook London and Paris. Then he took me bowling and burned a box of cake mix. Very low-key and awesome. I’m already busily jotting down our favorite wine-bar in London and hotel in Paris and other nooks and crannies not found in our normal guidebooks.

I felt slightly guilty for going to Chicago and not posting anything about here. Since it is my third trip there I didn’t feel the need to take another day off of work to see the city so I just bugged in and out over a three day weekend. However, I don’t want to leave you empty handed. Here is a Matador network post on Chicago on a Budget and I will add the following. Staying downtown can be pricey. If you’re going for a short trip you’ll be going to and from downtown in a cab or on the “L” at least once to stay downtown. Instead I would suggest staying at the airport, taking the “L” downtown and seeing your sights and then taking the “L” back. If you’re only going to do this once roundtrip then you’ll save time as you already would have had one roundtrip just getting to your downtown hotel. Even if your event is downtown you can take the train downtown, go to your meeting or whatever, do your sight-seeing and return. Sleeping by the airport is also pretty convenient for early flights as you can’t depend on Chicago traffic if you’re in a cab and the “L” can be a pain the morning, especially with baggage. Waking up, checking out and walking straight to your gate after getting your boarding pass in the lobby couldn’t be easier. It really makes Chicago so much less of a hassle.

Any locals have some tips? I have always found Chicago to be difficult to budget travel.

This was only a half-day because our flight was at 1600 so we had to be at the airport by 1400 and of course, nothing in Hong Kong really opens before 1000.

0830 Hong Kong Park – We watched an early morning Tai Chi class at the observatory and then wandered through their indoor Arid (cactus), semi-arid, and humid gardens. It was an indoor paradise of totally free and well groomed flora and we had it totally to ourselves at this early hour.

Next was the Hong Kong Park Aviary which felt like it was an exhibit straight out of Jurassic Park. It is a enormous net dome with a raised boardwalk going through the trees. You look down on the birds swimming for their breakfast as you walk past the ones in the trees eye to eye a waterfall beats down the side of the enclosure on one side. Again, we had it totally to ourselves as it was so early and everyone else who was up that early must have thought the warm sprinkles were going to turn into something more sinister after looking at the clouds.

Walked past the Hong Kong wedding registry where a bunch of beautiful brides were having their photos taken after registering their marriages. It must have been an auspicious date to get married as we saw at least 5 couples. This was right next to the koi ponds and gardens which we wandered through on our way to the…

1000 Teaware Museum – The guidebook we read before going said we would spend 30 minutes tops here, but I read everything and watched all the movies for a full two hours. I thoroughly enjoyed learning everything there was to learn about the history of tea and the process of purple clay pot making and picked up a souvenir tea pot. Unfortunately no photos are allowed inside the museum.

1200 Lunch at cafe under the mall at the Admiralty MTR station. There is a cute little grocery store there where you can pick up cheap eats for a picnic as well as a cafe for those who need to take a load off.

1300 Back at the hotel for a quick shower and then off to the airport early. This gave me time to wander in the Muiji To Go store for travel accessories.

2100 Land in Singapore and super cheap taxi to the hotel, dinner at the hotel and then straight to bed

Hong Kong day 2 was actually July 14th, but hubby took me to dinner that night which lasted 3 hours so I didn’t have a chance to post this until I got back.

0930 Morning walk to East Tsim Shau Station and metro to Wong Tai Sin Temple. The best part of this temple is actually its garden the Garden of Wishes. The temple and its courtyard are full to the brim with bus loads of local tourists seeking Taoist guidance on their fates, but the garden costs HK$2/US$.25 and somehow that deters enough people to make it extremely quiet and peaceful. It also has insanely large Koi.

1100 MTR from temple to Prince Edward Station

Flower Market – The amount of flowers in quantity and variety were impressive.

Snack at Patissierie shop – These little fresh pastry shops are everywhere and make a great cheap and yummy lunch on the run when taking time for Dim Sum isn’t in the cards.

Bird Market – Right after the flower market we took our pastries and walked through the bird market, thousands of tiny birds singing their hearts out.

Royal Palace hotel for a break (this hotel is so posh), we wanted to get out of the heat and consult our map, turned out we didn’t want to keep walking down to the Jade market in the heat so we grabbed the metro again.

1300 MTR to East Tsim Shau Station

Walk to Avenue of Stars (Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, Chow Yun Fat, etc), Tsim Sha Tsui Promenade by the shore for pictures of the skyline, Clock tower (last bit of old Army barracks)

The best part of this whole walk wass the Chinese Arts and Crafts store. The first floor of this store has HK$1,000,000 jade pieces and objects de art everywhere which we couldn’t even max out our credit cards to buy, it was better than most museums.

Upstairs were pricey, but high quality items that we could actually afford. Hubby picked up a lacquer box to store his nicknacks in and I glanced through the hand embroidered table linens. But I really started to enjoy myself when I got to the tea section full of hand painted teacups. I lingered so long that the department floor manager wandered over and sat us down for a tea ceremony. We had just had our tea appreciation course the day before so we totally knew what to do as far as drinking traditions, what to look for when we were smelling things and what pots are worth what. It was tons of fun and we walked out with a set of tea cups which I will always treasure.

1500 Walk to hotel passing Penninsula Hotel, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Shanghai Tang clothing store, and Nathan Road

1530 Shower, siesta

1600 Kowloon Park with Aviary (more flamingos), Sculpture garden, Hong Kong Heritage Discovery Center (tiny as it was under renovation and only part of it was only)

1800-2100 Anniversary Dinner @ Aspasia Restaurant in our hotel, absolutely amazing, although the formal service threw hubby off for awhile. Definitely the most expensive dinner we have ever had but the Master Chef was from Venice and his 3 Michelin stars look like they are well deserved, it was truly a unique culinary experience. My one regret is we missed the Symphony of Lights laser show both nights we were there as a result.

Today is my last free day before heading home tonight so I’m finally getting to use my Google maps walking tours of Singapore that I made. Like the one I did for Hong Kong I am basing it partially off of what the professionals did. For this one though I also have a friend who lives there who will be showing me around. I’m so excited to have a local guide, they are really the best.

Singapore Walking Tour: Little India Temples from National Geographic
Singapore Walking Tour: The Padang from National Geographic
Singapore Itineraries for 1day-1 week from Frommers

Today being my last day it is also my last chance for some authentic shopping. I didn’t lighten my bag to just save my shoulders, but to save room for souvenirs. My friend should take me shopping, but I do have one must stop at store that I have on my list so far:

Tea Bone Zen Mind
A small shop specializing in custom Chinese teapots, cups, and accessories. Will design to suit. 3 Seah Street #01-02; tel. +65 6334 4212

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

I’ve been creating my own maps on Google maps forever, making my own little guidebooks of Salt Lake City forever. Now Google  has rolled out its City Tours feature for planning and navigating itineraries.

Currently a Google Labs project (read work in progress), City Tours helps “identify points of interest and plan multi-day trips to most major-cities.” To build your tour, just enter the destination city, and City Tours automatically maps out a plan with activity suggestions for each day. The site also suggests how long to spend at each place and clocks the walking distance between destinations. (keep in mind Google maps walking distance feature is still in Beta so its a work in progress) My favorite feature is that you can edit the sights, and change the date and length of your visit.

The site is still very much in lab status so I’ll keep making my own guidebook maps and pasting them into my little black Moleskinefor now, but this is a great step in the right direction. Check out City Tours for yourself, then let me know what you think.