Yet another amazing day here in Hong Kong. After a night of vomiting, Macy woke up at 3:30 feeling fine. We ate, played, watched Beauty and the Beast and before we knew it, it was daylight (it seemed like the night that never ended.) As soon as we could, Macy and I were off to the park and to run off some steam.
When we arrived back at the apt Kathy was ready and we were off to explore more of the city. We walked over to the Mall and caught a double decked bus. We climbed the extremely narrow and curved stairs to sit at the front of the 2nd deck to catch the sites as we drove. On this one bus trip we were able to see mountains, valleys, beaches, ferries, the subway line, container ships being loaded in the harbour, a network of roads and housing and cemetery's built into the side of the mountain and more. The use of space here is beyond most I have seen before. We took the bus to Kowloon. (Kowloon is one of the areas of Hong Kong) We got off a block or so from Kathy's work, (so I know how to get there.) Macy loves all things buses so it was a great start to our adventure. We played in a park for a bit, then walked to a nearby mall, encountering many sites along the way.
After a tasty lunch, we put Macy in the sling(it was getting to be nap time as she had been up since 3:30) and we were off on the subway to the Central area of Hong Kong Island. Macy was able to get in her power nap so we were good for the rest of the day. Our destination was The Peak, the highest mountain on Hong Kong Island. One of the ways up the mountain is by The Peak Tram. The Tram rises from 28 m to 396 m above sea level in 1.4 km. As you can imagine, Macy loved being on the Tram.
Once at the top, the view of the City and Victoria Harbour is like a post card.
I have often heard of and saw pictures of the view, but being here is almost surreal. We wandered a bit, admired the view, I marveled at the fact that people actually live up there, and that there is a MALL up there. Wandering through the mall to get to "Old Macdonalds" for fries as Macy had caught a glimpse of the Golden Arches on our way to the outside viewing platform, we found a stage and Children's performers, so we stayed and watched part of their act. The kids loved singing and dancing with the 2 musicians. We then caught another double decked bus for the fun ride down the mountain to the Harbour. We were lucky to be able to again secure the seats up front on the 2nd deck, (of course for most of the way I was silently praying we did not crash over the edge of the cliff and be crushed at the bottom.) Once back down the mountain, we hopped on a "Ding Dong" 
They are these old, open windowed, non air conditioned, double decked cable cars/trams that rattle, clang and jerk along the tracks. We traveled to the end of the line, got off, then back on one going the other way, back to the subway station to catch a subway train that would bring us back here to Lantau Island, which is the end of one of the subway lines. We were beat, so instead of walking the 10-15 minutes from the subway/city bus stop, we hopped on the shuttle that takes people back and forth from the apt complex here to the Mall. These are the biggest apartment complexes anyone at home can imagine. Tens of thousands of people live here in this one complex, which is just one of many in this small area and this is nothing compared to the density of the housing I saw today on our adventure. The density of high rise apartments here is hard to grasp. One of the things unique to Hong Kong is something called an "Octopus" card. It is a plastic card that is used for everything. You prepay money on it. It is used to get on and off all mass transit, you can use it to pay for groceries/goods at almost all stores. Kathy's have a specialty chip that allows us to open and enter the controlled buildings. The transit system here is out of this world, it actually works. It is all connected, the wait times are minimal, it is clean, (in fact this is the absolute cleanest place I have been) it is orderly and for the most part friendly. People get up and give us their seats when they see we have Macy with us. For me Hong Kong is a mix of the best of Western culture and Asian culture.
Our planned adventure for tomorrow?? The Big Buddha!
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