Victoria Harbour at night.
On the last day of January our friend Agnes came to Discovery Bay and we had lunch together in The Chippy. Agnes had the fish, I had a chicken pie and Peter had the sausage. We shared some chips. Peter likes this restaurant because it is one of the few places in Hong Kong that does draft cider. The restaurant was nicely decorated for Chinese New Year. They'd also added a few more seats, which made it more comfortable.
Spring blossoms at The Chippy.
Chinese New Year decorations at The Chippy.
At The Chippy.
At The Chippy.
After the meal, we decided to take a selfie outside McDonald's. Apparently it's the fiftieth anniversary of McDonald's in Hong Kong, so there are special Ronald McDonald benches outside some of the restaurants. I don't mind sitting on the benches as long as I don't have to eat the food!!!!
With Ronald McDonald.
With Ronald McDonald.
Agnes very kindly brought us some homemade bread, homemade rice crackers and some Chinese New Year cookies. After the meal she came round our house and we all had a good catch up.
A few days later I realized we needed a few things from IKEA, so I took myself off to Causeway Bay. I had heard there were beautiful Chinese New Year displays outside Times Square, so I went there first.
Windmills outside Times Square.
Windmills outside Times Square.
Cherry blossoms outside Times Square.
Horses outside Times Square.
Horses outside Times Square.
Chess set outside Times Square.
From Times Square I walked towards IKEA, but instead of going straight in, I decided to have a quick wander around Victoria Park first. I like this park, but a visit here is hit and miss. Sometimes it's just a park and as such it's quite a pleasant one, but frequently it is being used as a venue for something such as the lantern festival or the garden festival or the Chinese New Year flower market. My visit was unfortunate as The Chinese New Year Market had been dismantled and the park was being set up for The Hong Kong Marathon. That just meant much of the park was fenced off and there were lots of huge trucks delivering water bottles. Not very exciting. The nicest thing I saw were the little statues outside the tennis courts
Anyone for tennis?
I wasn't bothered that there was nothing to see in the park, because I had finally got around to working out the location of a temple I have been planning to visit for ages. This temple is called Lin Fa Kung Temple. I found it easily, but discovered there were massive queues to get in. I'm sure this isn't normal and that it probably had something to do with Chinese New Year. Anyway I took a photo of the outside of the temple and left. No way was I queuing to go in. I'll try again at a non-festive time of year.
Lin Fa Kung Temple.
None of my plans for the day seemed to be working out. I went back to Victoria Park and as a last attempt at finding something nice to do went down to the Causeway Bay typhoon shelter and took some photos of the boats and the floating Tin Hau Temple. At least it was open and there were boats. Yippee!!! Seriously a walk down here is actually very pleasant.
Causeway Bay Typhoon Shelter.
Causeway Bay Typhoon Shelter.
Causeway Bay Typhoon Shelter.
Causeway Bay Typhoon Shelter.
Causeway Bay Typhoon Shelter.
Causeway Bay Typhoon Shelter.
The boat with all the flags is the floating Tin Hau Temple.
This person will paddle you out to your boat or the Tin Hau Temple.
This person will paddle you out to your boat or to the temple.
After enjoying my stroll along the waterfront next to The Typhoon Shelter, I went to IKEA and discovered they didn't have what I wanted to buy. It was one of those days!!! However, I did buy lots of things I never knew I wanted, so it all worked out in the end.
Fast forward another few days and I realize that I am becoming ashamed of the fact that I haven't been doing any hiking in the cool weather in Hong Kong, so I dragged myself out to go up Scenic Hill in Tung Chung. This is a really really short walk, so it probably couldn't be classified as a hike. Still the views from the top were nice. Scenic Hill overlooks the airport and Tung Chung. As you climb up Scenic Hill, you walk straight under the cable car that goes to the Big Buddha.
There's a colourful painted staircase up to the cable car.
View over the cable car on the way up.
View over Tung Chung on the way up.
Cable car.
Trigonometric marker on top of Scenic Hill.
Pavilion at the top of Scenic Hill.
View from Scenic Hill.
View from Scenic Hill.
Silver grass and view
Autumnal view.
Selfie on Scenic Hill.
Coming down Scenic Hill.
View on the walk down.
I also passed some beautiful flowers and lots of colourful autumnal trees.
Autumnal colours.
Autumnal colours.
Autumn colours.
Bauhinia trees.
Flowers.
Flowers
Flowers
Berries.
Ferns.
I followed this up with walking towards the airport along Scenic Drive, and that's a bit of a misnomer I can tell you, unless you like traffic and road works. Apparently there's an airport walking trail. This will probably be very nice when all the construction work around the airport is finished. I didn't follow the trail as such. I went to Cathay City, home of Cathay Pacific and photographed the old aeroplane that sits outside it. I thought this was their first aeroplane, Betsy, but apparently that one is in The Science Museum, still it's one of their earlier aircrafts. I read later there's a museum about Cathay Pacific inside Cathay City. I didn't know this, not sure if you can just turn up or if you have to plan a visit.
Old aircraft.
Old aircraft.
Flight attendants posing with the aircraft.
On my walk back, I also found a small park with the remains of some ancient kilns. Chek Lap Kok Airport is built on Chek Lap Chau Island. This was a small sleepy island with a handful of villagers until the airport was moved here from Kai Tak. With land reclamation, the island is no longer an island, but some features of the island were preserved. Its Tin Hau Temple is in a village in Tung Chung (I saw this on one of my walks)and its old kilns are here To be honest there's not really much left, but it's worth a look if you happen to be passing.
Ancient Kilns' Park.
Model of the kilns.
Ancient Kilns' Park.
On the 11th of February I had arranged to meet up with Jason and Sheena in North Point. Peter wanted to come and he wanted us to get a hotel room in North Point to make it easier for him to get there and get home in the light the next day, so he booked us a night in The Ibis Hotel, North Point. We decided the easiest way to get Peter there would be to take the ferry to Central and then get a taxi. With the new tunnel to North Point we got there really quickly.
We were given a harbour view room on the twenty-eighth floor. The room was small but had everything we needed: a little fridge, a safe, a kettle and cups. Surprisingly no tea or coffee was provided. Fortunately I had brought some from home. I wonder if this was just a mistake. We were given free drinks, rice crackers and fruit.
Peter in our room.
View from our room.
I went for a walk around North Point before we headed off to meet our friends. I started off by looking at the refurbished theatre on King's Road. This theatre is well-known for performances of Chinese Opera.
Theatre in North Point.
Poster advertising a Chinese Opera.
Inside The Theatre.
After that I had a wander around some of North Point's markets. It has markets selling clothes, fruit, vegetables, fish, meat and lots of other things.
Bags.
Clothes.
Clothes.
Eggs.
Fish.
Fish.
Fish.
Fruit and vegetable shop.
Chinese New Year decorations.
Chinese New Year decorations.
There were some Chinese New Year displays outside the hotels on the harbour front.
Chinese New Year displays.
Chinese New Year displays.
The displays at night.
The displays at night.
After an hour or so, I went back and got Peter and we headed off to Villa Villa to met up with Sheena and Jason. We were pleased to see Villa Villa was still doing draft Kirin beer. We also had some fries dipped in salted egg yolk and a cheese pizza. We spent an enjoyable evening catching up on all of our news. Sheena had just come back from a lovely holiday in Cambodia. Jason was heading off to a family dinner later that evening to say goodbye to his nephew. It was lovely to catch up.
Jason and I.
Peter and Sheena.
Pizza.
Fries.
Later that evening I went for a walk and discovered there's a new walkway along the harbour in North Point called The East Coast Boardwalk. It was filled with walkers, runners and joggers. There were also exercise bikes, tread mills and places for children to play. I really like the way that Hong Kong is really making the most of its beautiful harbour these days.
East Coast Boardwalk.
Exercise with a view.
Exercise with a view.
Enjoying the view.
I walked all the way to Fortress Hill where there's an illuminated Victoria Harbour sign and a structure that locals claim looks like the Burj Al Arab in Dubai(with a lot of imagination.)
Victoria Harbour.
Victoria Harbour.
The Dubai of Hong Kong.
The Dubai of Hong Kong.
The lights on the water were extremely beautiful.
Lights on the water.
Lights on the water.
Lights on the water
We slept well in the hotel. In the morning we were looking forward to breakfast. We had a lovely freshly cooked breakfast here when we stayed during COVID. Sadly the breakfast is now a buffet. The food wasn't bad. It was just all lukewarm rather than hot.
It was a really rainy day, so we just relaxed in the hotel then took a taxi and ferry back home.
This featured blog entry was written by irenevt from the blog Coming to a close..
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