Hong Kong, Day Two

After waking up early, getting ready, and debating what Chinese people ate for breakfast, we headed out onto the streets and found a bakery. An excellent start to the day... and somewhat of an indicator of the day to follow (walking and food, that is). We rendezvoused back at the hotel to meet Victor; our tour guide (tour slave?) for the day.

The first place Victor brought us was the International Commerce Centre. Up on the 100th floor (only a 60 second elevator ride from the bottom) we walked around the observation deck and tried to find all of the giant buildings we'd seen from the top of Victoria peak the previous day. I managed to find every building except for one super tall skyscraper. I had almost given up, until Victor pointed out a sign saying that we were currently in the 4th tallest building in the world, making my missing building the ICC.

Next on the tourism agenda was Ngong Ping. The central attraction was the gigantic statue of Buddha, but the best part by far was the 25 minute cable car ride! It's over 5km long, crosses two bodies of water, passes over several mountains and is still less than half the price of a trip up Grouse mountain. Did I mention our cable car also had a glass bottom?

By the time we made it back to the city it was time for dinner. The restaurant Victor was taking us to, however, was so popular/tiny that we had to wait an hour and a half. No problem! That's gives us plenty of time for shopping and pre-dinner!

As we walked down the streets we marveled at how 30 identical shops within 2 blocks could all sell the exact same things and still remain in business. We stopped at a bigger/less popular restaurant, ordered a few small but delicious things and drank lots of tea. After a little bit more walking it was time for dinner!

The restaurant we went to ("Additional Luck" said Victor after we demanded a translation of the squiggles) had been featured in all sorts of news papers and travel guides and was incredibly packed. To make matters worse/hilarious it was about the size of the average dinning room. They had to move tables around to get some people in or out, and they even sat a fourth person at our table because we only took up three seats. The food however, was worth the wait. We had all the usual dim sum favorites and an extra order of their famous BBQ pork buns. We were barley able to squeeze out the door.

After dinners we did some shopping on the streets and went down to the water front to stare into the lights of Hong Kong island. We took a short but terrifying taxi ride back to the hotel and stopped at a vegetarian restaurant for some post-dinner.