What better way to celebrate 200 days of travelling than a two days, one night adventure across a bit of ocean to the country of Macau?
I get up early, take a shower and get yesterday’s little breakfast foods out of the fridge. Joe is up shortly after I get out of the shower, just in time to put on one last load of laundry before we go. The washing machine takes less than an hour, and we hang every towel in the place on the two clothes lines to dry while we’re gone. Then we wake up the kids.
We have to be at the ferry terminal to meet Uncle Sam and Aunt Monica at 10am, so we leave home around 8.45am. We bus down to the subway, and three subway lines later, we’re there. Sam’s just grabbing some breakfast, so we head over to McDonald’s for a quick snack. Then we head upstairs to go through passport control (only us, HK residents scan their ID cards and are quicker to go through), get our seat assignments, and board the ferry.
After an hour on a super fast boat, we find ourselves in Macau! Once again we have to go through customs, leaving Sam and Monica to wait for us on the other side. It’s a quite new and modern ferry terminal, and we take the opportunity to pose for our first Macau picture.
We get a hotel shuttle bus to the Londoner Grand, and because we are early (about 11.45am by now), we are asked to store our luggage and come back to check in later. The girls are already exploring their shiny new environment, and of course we have to snuggle the G Bear outside his café!
Seeing as we have to wait a couple of hours before we’ll be able to check in anyways, we decide to go have some lunch and explore this part of town. Joe and I visited Macau in 2013, with 2nd and 3rd aunties and their families. It was also New Year’s Day, near everything was closed, and there were hardly any tourists about. Today is a very different experience!
We hop in a taxi and head into the town centre, or at least the closest city centre. Macau may not be very big, but it consists of several islands, and each seems to have its centre. Sam and Monica lead us past the crowds to a local restaurant, known for their pork chop buns. They order some egg tarts to start (is this a thing, or is it just how family spoils kids?), then some beef noodles for Maylin and Téa to share, and Joe and I get a pork chop bun.
After lunch, we head out to explore. The neighbourhoods feel very European with their Portuguese history, colourful tiles and restaurants. There’s bacalao and dry fish to be had, and everything is in three languages: Chinese, Portuguese and English.
We walk along the ridge and come to an area that opens up to a lake and green space. It’s a beautiful park, there are musicians along the path and a heritage museum to see what a Portuguese home looked like about 100 years ago. It looks very similar to the heritage homes we visit in Norway, so the fact that they don’t allow photos doesn’t bother us much.
At 3pm, we return to the hotel to get our rooms. While our room is ready, Sam and Monica have to wait a bit for theirs. They come up with us to make sure we are happy with our room, and are we ever! PHEW! We could happily live in this suite for a while, after all the varying accommodations we’ve had since we left Canada in September! Let me walk you through it:
After unpacking (I try to get wet toothbrushes out of their plastic bag as fast as possible after getting to our destination) and checking out the room for a bit, we go for a walk through our hotel. It’s massive, there are things and people to see in all directions, and it’s very impressive.
After exploring, we go get ready for dinner. We don’t have time to go swimming first, then do dinner after, as the pool is only open 8am to 8pm. We decide to go swimming in the morning, and head for dinner around 5.30pm. We get to our chosen restaurant at 5.15pm, and have to wait for them to open. Luckily, there’s an Apple store directly across from the restaurant, providing a space to wait while testing out some of their fun products.
Gordon Ramsay Pub & Grill sounds like as British of a restaurant as they get, and seeing as every establishment in this hotel will charge us two arms and a leg, we might as well pick his restaurant for the evening! We are seated in a beautiful dining room, full of dark leather, dark wood, colourful bottles and servers with suspenders.
We place our order, get our beverages and bread is served.
After dinner, we finally found the teacups empty and the girls could have their turn in the fun art installation! The cups were just next to the ice cream cart, so the girls and I got an ice cream each, which we planned to bring upstairs. Joe was headed to the casino to wait for Sam.
Ice creams in hand, we noticed a crowd of people expectantly waiting over at the Piccadilly fountain, and so we stopped to see what was going to happen. Joe expected it to be a fountain show, and so we stood very close to the balcony that happened to be the main focal point of the show.
After a fun 5 minutes of music and dancing, the show was over, and we had very little ice cream left to bring upstairs. We said goodbye to Joe for the night, he was to meet Sam after they had finished their dinner, and so the girls and I planned a movie night upstairs. We got ready for the night and climbed into bed, but first – Mom had to try the contraption under the vanity.
We ended up watching YouTube videos cast onto the large tv, as we couldn’t get the movies we wanted to watch. Maylin was very worried about her Dad, wondering if he was ok downstairs, wishing he was upstairs with us, so she could see that he was safe. With enough reassurances, she ended up falling asleep in the end, and Joe came home half an hour later. Everyone enjoyed the wonderful hotel beds, and why are we here only one night?
Meget imponerende!
Ikke sant? Vi var utrolig heldige som fikk bo der!
Wow! Very impressive, all of it.
It was like a dream!