I have to say, Hong Kong surprised me with it's natural beauty. I wasn't expecting it to be like if Honolulu and Manhattan had a baby and it was adopted by Asia. But it was GORGEOUS and metropolitan. (I have no idea what I was expecting it to be, but the green mountains and crystal blue waters took me by surprise.)
We were staying on the Kowloon side, so we strolled up the Walk of Fame in the scorching heat...
...past Jackie Chan's star and Bruce Lee's statue, and then made our way across to the Hong Kong side. We visited Victoria Park...
...and the busy Causeway Bay area, then headed back to Kowloon to see the city view by night:
Isn't it lovely?
After Hong Kong, it was back to Beijing, where pollution has taken the blue sky and turned it a sort of milky white (hey, at least it isn't yellow, I saw some yellow while I was there).
I had done the usual tourist rounds my first time there - and they were spectacular! Forbidden City, Great Wall, Temple of Heaven, Summer Palace - check, check, check, check. I did revisit lovely Hou Hai for some delicious Hot Pot...
Then it was up to Jingshan Park. If you climb up to the temple at the top of the hill:
You can see the entire Forbidden City laid out before you:
I wandered the park, listening to a man playing the Can Can on a Chinese flute in the distance, and visiting with the lions...
(Sadly, not a pet-able lion, unlike the Thai tigers.)
Beijing, for all the incredible sights there (The Great Wall! The Summer Palace!), really is a concrete jungle and though I loved visiting my friends and the delicious Peking Duck and getting to know the city a second time, I was more than ready to head off toward Inner Mongolia and Datong!
(Though for the purposes of the blog, we're taking a short break... more travelogs on Monday!)
We were staying on the Kowloon side, so we strolled up the Walk of Fame in the scorching heat...
...past Jackie Chan's star and Bruce Lee's statue, and then made our way across to the Hong Kong side. We visited Victoria Park...
...and the busy Causeway Bay area, then headed back to Kowloon to see the city view by night:
Isn't it lovely?
After Hong Kong, it was back to Beijing, where pollution has taken the blue sky and turned it a sort of milky white (hey, at least it isn't yellow, I saw some yellow while I was there).
I had done the usual tourist rounds my first time there - and they were spectacular! Forbidden City, Great Wall, Temple of Heaven, Summer Palace - check, check, check, check. I did revisit lovely Hou Hai for some delicious Hot Pot...
Then it was up to Jingshan Park. If you climb up to the temple at the top of the hill:
Beijing, for all the incredible sights there (The Great Wall! The Summer Palace!), really is a concrete jungle and though I loved visiting my friends and the delicious Peking Duck and getting to know the city a second time, I was more than ready to head off toward Inner Mongolia and Datong!
(Though for the purposes of the blog, we're taking a short break... more travelogs on Monday!)
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