Maylin declared already yesterday that she didn’t want to leave the house on Saturday, and when she wakes up, even though she feels better than yesterday afternoon, she’s in no mood to get out of her PJs. With it being Saturday, there’s no school work on the agenda for today, just fun. Joe thinks that means working while watching the Olympics, Téa and I think that that means heading downtown for a mother daughter day out! We say goodbye to the other two, and head to the bus depot.
I have quite a few cafés stored in my Google Maps that I want to check out, and Téa is the perfect company when mom wants to drink hot things and eat sweet treats. We aim for Hong Kong Island on the 103 bus, and after what seems like such a quick 45 minute ride, we get off close to one of these cafés. The only problem is… it’s too early. It’s 9.45am, we’ve just been dropped off at a pretty deserted business district on the island, and we’re not even hungry!
We decide to explore our surroundings and see what we find. On one of the parallel streets to ours, we see the “ding-dings”, the double decker street cars, and decide to walk in that direction. On our way there, we discover something called the Southorn Playground. I suggest we walk through it, even though we’re not about to stop at a playground. Téa is sad that she’s wearing a skort that she’s not comfortable playing around in, but also that she doesn’t have her trusty sister sidekick, with whom she loves exploring new playgrounds. We walk through the block sized playground, seeing a soccer pitch, people playing basketball beyond that, and so many adults having fun playing sports! There are also bleechers, changing rooms and washrooms.
On the other side of the Southorn Playground, I discover that we’re a block away from the famed Bakehouse, with many locations throughout Hong Kong. We may not be in the mood to sit down and have a treat just yet, but we can certainly walk over and peek into a bakery! This particular location has a restaurant attached, so if we ever feel like going out for a Western style brunch, my vote would be for this place. There is a line out the door, and luckily, a separate take out bakery right next door. We walk in, breathe in the smells, and marvel at the delicious looking selections. One double chocolate cookie later, we are back out on the streets, having promised we will return for more another day.
The city still feels empty and deserted, except for Bakehouse, so we decide to aim for a mall. We look one up, and head in that direction. On our way there, we see this happy figure:
The mall we discovered we were close to, is called Pacific Place. I don’t know what I was expecting, but we are now surrounded by 5 star plus hotels, resorts, restaurants and shops. This is NOT my comfort zone, and in my wrinkly shorts, I feel properly out of place. That doesn’t stop us from taking photos at the New Year display on the basement floor!
We are about to head to the ding-ding and go back towards a different mall a little further away, when we discover what looks like cuteness at the other side of the overpass. I am so glad we let our curiosity lead the way! We duck into a smaller, more intimate mall, with McHugs (remember the cuteness?) and MiniSo, another favourite store to browse.
We also discover a kids’ nail place in this mall, offering the most affordable kids’ manicure we’ve seen in Hong Kong yet. We look on curiously, and then decide to go for lunch first, and come back for Téa’s manicure later. We know exactly where we want to eat, as Téa saw a restaurant over in the famous mall that she is desperate to try. And of course, being her mother, I am easily convinced this is the only option for lunch. Be gone, dreams of cute local cafés!
Téa and I head over to Shake Shack, where Téa orders a cheeseburger and a small vanilla milkshake. I order a cheeseburger and a Coke, and we decide we’ll split a cheesy fries. Téa loved her burger, and disliked everything else. I disliked the burger, tolerated the fries and enjoyed my Coke. We had a fun lunch, while laughing at the fact that we’ll never come back, and our curiosities have been thoroughly satisfied.
Meanwhile, on the other side of town, Joe has gotten Maylin out of PJs and into “going outside clothes”. They head down to the market near our place, and have lunch at Café de Coral. Joe orders a set with macaroni soup, Maylin’s new favourite thing in the world. She eats two small bowls, Joe eats the rest, and gets his yin yang drink as well. After that, they go downstairs into the bustling market, where Maylin picks a fish for tonight’s dinner, and they grab some vegetables. Joe says they need one potato, Maylin votes for more, Joe overrides her, and lives to regret his choice…
After lunch, we excitedly headed back over to the kids’ nail place. Téa was invited to sit down, but when she asked them to take her old nail polish off before putting new one on, they couldn’t do it! This nail place does not stock nail polish remover (!) as their nail polish is all peel off. So after all that excitedment and anticipation, Téa wasn’t able to get her manicure after all. We’ll come back another day, maybe even with Maylin!
There was an entrance to the MTR right next door, and so we headed back across to the Kowloon side instead of going straight home. I suddenly thought – hey, let’s go to IKEA! There’s a small one in the bottom of a mall at the very next station, right across the harbour! It took some hunting, but we were able to find it in the end. We actually stopped in at Sephora on our way too, and were able to pick up some special stuff we’ve been asking for at every other drugstore/beauty supply store we’ve come across, so that was a win.
An IKEA in the basement of a city centre mall? Yup, it’s a pretty cool, even if tiny, experience! There are rooms set up as examples, although nothing like the massive floor of ideas in a regular IKEA. Everything here is centered around being space saving and efficient, and seeing as we’ll be going back into apartment living in Vancouver, just the type of inspiration we need!
Being Norwegian, the Swedish Food Market is my favourite section of any IKEA. I pick up my pickled herring and my crispbread, while skipping the snacks. Grandma’s place is SO FULL OF SNACKS still! I know where IKEA is now though, if we ever make our way through the snack mountain at home, I can come back and pick up some treats another day. But hang on, where are the bag clips? I’ve never heard of an IKEA that doesn’t have bag clips! It’s been on my shopping list ever since arriving in Hong Kong, there are none at grandma’s place. We end up getting the world’s softest bathroom mat though, so we do find some things on our list!
We decide we want to take the number 1 bus from Star Ferry, we don’t want to fight the crowds on Nathan Road and risk getting “bad” seats on our bus ride home. It’s going to be another 45 minutes on a bus, and we want our favourite seats, thank you very much! Instead, we fight crowds walking along from IKEA to the Star Ferry area… But we see some pretty cool things along the way!
We get back home around 4pm, and Maylin is feeling much better. Joe steams a whole fish for dinner, served with rice and steamed choy in oyster sauce.
We end the night with more Olympics, watching the Norwegian medal count increase (18 golds and 41 medals in total, not too shabby for a small 5 million people nation!), and the girls play. I try to catch up on my blog, seeing as I’ve been terribly behind since the backup incident a week ago.
I set my alarm for 7am, so I can have a shower before my dentist appointment tomorrow morning. I’m so over being in pain! I wonder what this dentist will do, and if they can relieve it, at least somewhat?