Hong Kong

Hello Everyone!
We survived our longest flight of the entire trip! Our total travel time, door to door, came out to 33 hours, but it’s smooth sailing from now on! The boys did great on the plane, like always. They slept a good part of it and watched movies and played their DS. Arriving in Hong Kong was a thrill to our senses. It is such a beautiful city to explore, full of glass incased sky scrapers nestled between mountains and water. It is full of rich, beautiful people driving incredibly exorbitant cars, shopping in the most expensive stores. This is a city that is truly asian yet also has very strong western influences. Walking the streets it seems like any other city, but when you turn off onto back side streets, your experience becomes very different. Streets are filled with open aired shops selling everything imaginable. Butchers are displaying and cutting their meats on the street and seem to use every imaginable part of the animal-nothing goes to waste! Heads, tongues, feet, everything hanging from hooks on display. Fish and shrimp were all still jumping around on the packs of display ice. The boys found it a sad sight to see, but didn’t mind eating them later for dinner! Everything is incredibly fresh!

We also went to Ngong Ping on the lush green hills of Lantau Island. We took a 25 minute cable car ride up to the top which offered us some spectacular views of the surrounding countryside. Ngong Ping has the tallest, bronze, outdoor seated Buddha in the world. It was a very interesting and eye opening experience to see so many people burning incense and praying to this Buddha statue. We also went on the world’s longest escalator. It was completely different than what we expected. The whole thing climbs the streets of SoHo, an area filled with small winding streets & trendy restaurants.
Bart is a giant here. One little old lady got on the metro and started giggling like a schoolgirl when she saw Bart. She only came up to his elbow and was pointing and showing her friends how tall he is. I think he stands out just a little bit!