Hong Kong Island

After a very good night sleep in our comfortable room we headed out early for a quick trip to Starbucks for breakfast before getting on our tour bus for an island tour. Hong Kong is made up of many different islands. For example we landed on Lantau Island but are staying on Kowloon island. The bus travelled through the complicated tunnel system towards Hong Kong island. The tour was half day and we saw a lot of landmarks. We started at a beautiful temple, then headed up to Victoria Peak. To travel to the peak we rode a vintage cable car up the side of a mountain. As we head up we traveled at a 45 degree angle, luckily we had a few seats to sit in or it could have gotten a little crazy. Once at the top we admired the beautiful view of the harbor. We managed to grab a few souvenirs from the Hard Rock store before getting back on the bus. Our next stop was the floating city of junks and sanpans. We boarded our own junk and were able to float through their city. Greg had been on this same boat ride 12 years before and he said that there were significantly less boats in this small protected harbor. When we asked the tour guide why she said it was because the yacht club has moved in and demanded the boats be moved away from the docks so they can use them. Another reason most are gone is a serious typhoon that hit the harbor wiping out a lot of boats. The people that were displaced were moved into government housing. After our boat ride we headed to Stanley Market. I'd been given a special job by my father in law Sam when he heard we were traveling to Hong Kong. He sent me on a mission to find Greg Norman shirts at a small stall inside the sprawling market. He gave me what I thought were vague directions that turned out to be spot on. We found Sam the golf shirt seller with ease, his dog was sleeping on the floor just as my father in law had described. The shop owner even remembered Sam even though it had been years since he'd seen him. We got the shirts as well as a picture of Greg with Sam the stall owner. It made us both happy to have successfully completed our mission. We boarded the bus and headed back to our final destination a jewelry shop. Since it was mother's day my parents had sent me to Hong Kong with money to buy a ring. Gabriella helped me select a beautiful jade ring. While I was ring shopping Greg selected a beautiful necklace for me as a 10th anniversary present. The necklace contains a diamond dragon which spins in a gold circle, it symbolizes my chinese birth symbol and the spinning means that good luck will always come to me. I walked out of the jewelry shop with two new beautiful pieces of jewelry.

After the tour we arrived back at the hotel to change clothes and headed out to my special Mother's Day surprise. We walked to the hotel next door, The Peninsula is a very high end hotel which has a special High Tea. We waited in line for a table and soon sat down to a scrumptious tea service. While Greg and I enjoyed tea Gabriella sipped daintily on a vanilla milkshake. The food was delicious, my favorite were the salmon tea sandwiches, Greg's were the scones and Gabriella's were the cookies. It was really absolutely glamorous, a fantastic way to celebrate mother's day. After tea we changed again and took the ferry across the water back to Hong Kong island. The trip over made me a little sick and the heat and humidity made walking around uncomfortable. We only made it a few blocks before I needed to find a place to sit down. We finally found a spot in the convention center, Greg and Gabriella took a look at the view while I relaxed for a few minutes with a large cold bottle of water. After returning to Kowloon we watched the evening laser show from the waterfront, it was very impressive. By the time we called it a night we were all tired.