Final Day--Hong Kong and Home
We decided to sleep in until we woke up, so we got up about 7:45 a.m. After organizing our luggage a little bit we headed down to breakfast. When I booked the room I booked the special package that included breakfast. The breakfast was very nice. It was a buffet at their “Market” restaurant. They had fresh pastries, fresh fruit, waffles, French toast, cereals, salad, and hot items also. I ended up having homemade yogurt with fresh fruit, granola and honey. They had fresh pineapple that was super sweet. I think I have probably eaten a truckload of pineapples on this trip they have been so tasty.
After breakfast we headed back up to our room to get our final packing done. Check-out time was noon, but or flight from Hong Kong to San Francisco did not leave until 10:30 at night. We made plans to have the hotel store our bags so we could wander around the city and sightsee and shop.
So when we finally got all our bags organized, the bellman came up and picked up our bags and then we were off for a day on the town. The hotel has a shuttle that makes stops at the Peninsula hotel and the harbor front area, so we took the shuttle to the harbor front which dropped us off right near the Star Ferry terminal. The Star Ferry has been transporting people back and forth across the harbor for years and is something of an icon in Hong Kong.
So we bought our tickets which were only the equivalent of $0.50 US and boarded the top deck of the double decker ferry (built in 1949) and made the short trip over to Hong Kong island. We then boarded the #15 double-decker city bus which took us through town and up the very narrow road all the way to the top of Victoria Peak. That was quite the ride up the mountain.
At the top of the mountain they have several observation areas, one free and one you have to pay for, and of course a shopping mall (what else). Hong Kong is basically one giant shopping mall. I have never seen a city that was so shopping oriented. Even the subway is filled with stores. In fact, every single subway stop appeared to have a Mrs. Field’s cookies. At least it made the subway smell good.
After quickly checking out the free observation area, it started to rain and then pour, so we headed into the mall to find a snack for lunch. We ended up having Haagen Dazs ice cream. That was about all my stomach could take. It has not been too happy since we got back to Singapore from Kota Kinabalu.
We finished off our ice cream and then had to make a dash across to another building to buy our tickets to take the tram back down to the bottom of the peak. Luckily we had packed one umbrella so we did not get totally drenched. Note: If you are traveling to Singapore or Hong Kong make sure you take an umbrella--you will need it.
The line for the tram was a little long but moved pretty quickly and in no time were on our way down the hill. Boy oh boy was that a steep trip down the hill. We were actually sitting backwards on the ride down, but that was probably a good thing. The ride seemed much shorter when you go straight down the hill versus taking the bus up the winding road. We got off the tram and decided to walk back to the Star Ferry terminal.
Distances on the map here in Hong Kong are very deceiving. What looks like a long distance on the map is actually only a couple of blocks. It is amazing what all they can pack on such a small island. We also could have taken the MTR (subway) back across (it goes under the harbor), but I much preferred the Star Ferry. It was actually fairly quick, cheap, less crowded, and you had a nice view of the city.
After we got back to the Kowloon area, Eric wanted to check out a few camera shops to see if prices on camera lenses were any better here than in the states. Before we left home I had found some websites with information on the best places to buy camera gear so we decided to check a couple of them out. Fortunately two of them were very close to each other so we hopped on the subway and headed for the stop that was closest to both of them.
I have never seen so many people in my life. I had kind of forgotten what day of the week it was. Of course it was Saturday and it appears that the millions of people that live and visit Hong Kong all go out shopping on Saturday. We wedged ourselves onto the subway and went the few stops that we needed to go and then got off. Then we wedged our way off the subway and up the several floors of steps to the street level which was an even bigger mass of people.
Luckily the two camera shops were just around the corner from the subway station. We slowly made our way around the corner and into the camera stores. They did have the lens that Eric was looking for but the price was not that big of a difference from what he could get it for in the states. After checking another few stores and shuffling our way up and down the street with the masses of people, we decided to head back to the hotel and maybe find some place to get a bite to eat on the way back.
We got back on the subway and went back to the stop closest to our hotel. We decided to go back to Bulldogs Bar and Grill and get a snack before making our way back to the hotel. After our snack we decided to take a walk along the harbor front.
They had a very nice walkway all along the harbor and over the bridge near our hotel. Looking into the water we saw lots of really big jellyfish. We also discovered on our walk that poodles are obviously the dog of choice of people living in Hong Kong. We saw about seven poodles in just a short distance, many of them dressed up in little outfits, and several of their owners pushing their dog strollers. It was rather entertaining.
Then we made our way back to the hotel. We went out and sat by the pool on the 9th floor for a little while. The hotel has a very nice lounge for guests to hang out in to either wait for their room to be readied or if they have a late departure. So we got a couple of our bags out of storage and took advantage of the showers and changing room to freshen up before heading to the airport for our flight. We then got the rest of our bags out of storage and loaded them into the taxi for the ride to the airport.
Since it was about 8 p.m. the traffic was much lighter, so we got to the airport fairly quickly. The taxi was also much cheaper as we did not have to take a toll road back to the airport. We unloaded our bags and went into the terminal to find the ticket counter. We happened to walk up and ask a ticket agent where we needed to go and we were actually at the right counter so she took us right to another agent who checked us in--no waiting.
After making our way through security and passport control we went and hung out in the Star Alliance lounge before our flight. We then headed to our gate to board the plane for our 13 hour flight back to San Francisco. I think I passed out and slept most of the flight and Eric snoozed for a little bit but spent most of the time watching movies. The flight actually left about 45 minutes late but we managed to make up that time in the air and landed in San Francisco on time.
We were scheduled to take United’s last flight of the night out of SF back to Phoenix. We had a pretty close connection so we had just enough time to go through passport control, claim and recheck our bags, and go back through security to get to our gate. Luckily there was a United Lounge near our gate so we went in and used the bathroom and grabbed a few snacks before heading to our gate.
The flight back to Phoenix only had about 27 people on it, so we obviously got upgraded to first class for the 1 hour 20 minute ride back. I spent the flight typing up some of this blog--before I forgot half of what we did. The interesting part of the flight came after we landed. We made our way to the gate and the pilot parked the plane. Then we sat and waited for about 20 minutes because they could not get the gate maneuvered up to the plane. The pilot finally told us that we were going to have to all sit back down and put our bags away so that they could move the plane to another gate. Just after that they finally managed to get the gate up to the plane.
By the time we got to the baggage claim area our bags were obviously waiting for us, so we collected them up and headed out the door. Jody was nice enough to provide taxi services for us for this trip--Thanks Jody.
It is always fun taking vacations and seeing new places, but there is nothing like your own bed and boy were we ready to crawl into it.
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