Oh the Olympics… This morning, Joe watched the replay of Canada vs Czech Republic in the quarterfinals for ice hockey. He was so focused! The girls were on “New Year’s holidays” and just playing this morning. I like the Olympics too, but I’m more about watching the medals rack up for Norway than actually watching the replays. I read the news the minute I wake up, so I already know the results, making the actual event less exciting… Am I doing it wrong?
After a simple lunch at home, we head out to explore for the afternoon. I stop at the clearing on our floor and take the below picture. When I was looking for a picture from our last visit in 2016, I came over a very similar picture as well, although taken from inside the apartment. I’m trying to show the size of the tiles, and the fact that they cover inside (not inside the apartment though, thank goodness), outside, everywhere “external” (so each floor’s hallway, as they are open to the elements both in the middle of each wing, as well as where they meet by the elevators). As the girls are working on simple math, my brain is spinning with the sheer number of itsy bitsy tiles.
We have decided to bus it to the Star Ferry area, thinking that maybe it’ll be calmer out there today, with it only being the 3rd day of New Year. We walk down to the bus depot, and hop on the number 1 bus. The weather cooperates, and we get a new view of the Lion Rock mountain.
We get off the bus and walk around the harbour side towards the Avenue of Stars, where movie stars have their hand prints and stars on a pier by the harbour. We soon learn that this was NOT a calm day to come down here, and “drown” in tourist groups from Mainland China. As we abort mission and take a sharp left to escape the crowd and aim for calmer streets, we see this funky looking sticky-outy part on a building:
We weave through the streets, on the hunt for a cha chaan teng, the traditional tea restaurant. We want to eat as much of traditional Hong Kong diner food as we can while we are here, as it’s scarse elsewhere. The city is so busy today, but we find two diners next door to each other, and duck into the less busy one. We are not feeling like waiting another half hour for seats!
Once we’re allocated a tiny table in the middle of the bustling place (less busy means pretty full but with no lineup), we try to understand the menu, and seeing as we’ve already had some lunch, we are really only looking for a snack. When we go to order off the menu, the waitress brusquely informs us that only the holiday menu is in effect, and our choices are now severely limited. We get two dishes to share: fried chicken and fries for the girls, and a deep fried French toast for Joe and I.
After our afternoon snack, we headed north on Nathan Road, as we rushed past the cartoon character area on our way to watch the parade the other day. The entrance to the character park is between some of the stores in a long line of stores, reminicent of a strip mall from home, but nicer.
We are heading in the direction of Temple Street Night Market. This is one of the most famous night markets, and my first visit here was in February of 2006, exactly 20 years ago. Much has changed since then!!
We were in browsing only mode today, and left the market empty handed. Joe decided seeing as he still has a discount on Uber or whichever app he was using, that we would indulge and get a car home. We booked a car, and waited only a few minutes for it to arrive. 15 minutes later, we were dropped off outside grandma’s building, and were home, sweet home.
Dinner was a simple rice, scrambled chive eggs and choi. Fresh steamed choi with oyster sauce is delicious, if you haven’t tried it yet, I highly recommend it. We opened a couple of the New Year cookie boxes (because if we don’t start soon, we’ll not be able to get through all our treats), and watched some more Olympic activity. Nice and quiet end to another day of exploration!