the first day started off foggy in hong kong and quite chilly. neither of us were prepared for 11 degrees celsius… my parents will laugh of course but it was freezing compared to the 28 degrees or so we had come from!
foggy center city from across the water... we stayed in kowloon which is a neighborhood of hongkong and across the water from downtown
the night before we had arrived and were so exhausted we went straight to bed without eating. actually i had been motion sick during the flight (threw up during the landing actually, you know when everyone is being quiet, which was soooo embarassing) so i didn’t feel much like eating anyway. we stayed in a simple guesthouse that i had researched online. places in hong kong were expensive and this one had high reviews… kowloon which is the area we were in was where many of the budget hotels and such were. anyway, we woke up super early and so we took the ferry to the city center.
looking back at kowloon
on the ferry
another ferry going back the way we came... ships passing in the misty morning
the cute ferry terimal in the city center... architecturally interesting no?
reclaiming land from the ocean and part of the skyline beyond...
space is obviously an issue… i heard that hong kong property is some of the most expensive in the world. you should see the huge highrises people live in. its’ amazing. as matt put it looking at the next view “they don’t screw around with space do they”.
look how close these buildings are together!
cute little shop tucked into the bottom of a highrise
it is not uncommon to find random little shops and even temples tucked into highrise residential areas. they even had an escalator going up the hill to use less space and make it easier to access the densely packed neighborhoods.
escalator up the hill!
sometimes it felt very like new york… 
and then you end up on a street where all the signs are in chinese… 
with they way they stacked the places up the hill you could be in san francisco!!!
heading up the hill
about halfway up the hill theres a road called hollywood road it’s lined with little antique shops and stalls. like the one below. there was such an intriquing array of products it was very tempting but since it was so early in the day and i have no experience so i was quite intimidated… 
there was a temple tucked among all the tall buildings. it was quite beautiful and relegious feeling despite its surroundings. the whole place was wreathed in smoke from the burning incense.
temple man mo... which is 150 years old or so
hanging incense...never seen these before... actually we have one at the office unburnt but had no idea
as with any city there is always a bit of irreverence… 
there is also the old and the new takes on the old…
the girl
the boy.... and he likes her
saw this sign... i told mattie it reminded me of us.... two birdies seeing the world... he rolled his eyes....i still like it
the area we were in was called soho… sounds like new york to me. its full of cute shops and tons of different restaurants. apparently its a huge hit with the expats. mattie said he thought the area reminded him of europe at times… 
after that we headed back down the hill…
looking back up the hill.... matt said "so they left some of it"... meaning the greenery
actually we hypothosized that the reason the hills were still there was because it was too steep to build highrises… still the hills do add a romantic back drop to the concret jungle of a city below.
mid-levels
this is sort of random but the street cars are something mattie said he remembered from reading about hongkong and they were so dashed tiny and cute i had to show you a picture 
so as we came off the hill we went throught the zoo and the botanical gardens which were free but nothing special. we also walked through a shopping district and some splendid malls. there are so many malls in asia… its great when you have to find a restroom but as matt puts it… they bulldozed their history to put in another mall. amazing that so many people are shopping too. and how many of them have to have their designer bags etc. seriously asian people put a whole new meaning to “keeping up with the jones’”.
we hit up wanchai which was the relight district at the end of world war ii… here we found things were alittle less mecahnized and westernized. we were following a tip from the guide book and were alittle nervous about what our lunch experience would be because of the all too authentic neighborhood and exterior. still we fair quite well and the food was delicious!!!! matt says he doesn’t get my obsession with dumplings… cannot explain it but these were heavenly.
dumplings...we trie two tyes... pork and shrimp as they were out of beef. yum!!!!
menu... remember its in hong kong dollars
dumpling restaurant
after the yummy late lunch it began to rain. we headed to times square because of course we had to see it. it really was just another big mall. we did run across this street that was very chinatown and more authentic seeming. here’s some pics… 
after a long day exploring the city we headed back to kowloon via ferry of course. there we wandered a little and went to dinner and then to bed! we saw so much and i must say i was pleasantly surprised by hong kong.
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