Hong Kong!

First impressions:
blue sky with white puffy clouds = happy Amy
trees and water = happy Beth
Hong Kong is like China's sophisticated, rich, way cooler, distant cousin by marriage.

Day One
We arrived in Shenzhen early and went through customs to Hong Kong. We got settled in our sweet hotel then headed off to explore the city. We took the ferry from Kowloon to Hong Kong Island where we had an AMAZING lunch at Taco Loco. Guacamole. Need I say more? We experienced the tallest escalators in the world, then headed to Victoria Peak where you can see an overview of the cityscape. We enjoyed window shopping on the Peak, then enjoyed Starbucks and wrote postcards. We had Burger King (who knew you could ever strongly desire Burger King?) and then made our way back to Kowloon. We enjoyed our nice hotel rooftop pool, end of day one.

Day Two
We woke up, had a delicious glass of MILK, went for a morning swim and then went to Disney! Yep, two 25 year olds at Disney alone. It was a fun day. Beth got to fulfill some childhood dreams, and I got to see the Lion King performance. Let me just take a moment on that one. It was sort of a Broadway rendition of the Lion King where actual people played the parts with dancing and singing. I was deeply moved. We're talking, I almost cried more than once. I've realized lately my deep love of musical/broadway/dancing/singing stuff. I can't think of anything more fun. So we'll call this my ridiculous dream and guilty pleasure. Live musicals. Plus it was multicultural which really gets me.

So Disney was fun, aside from the fact that it was BLAZING HOT and Chinese people push. It's just a fact. They're pushers. And it makes me so angry, but words can't do it justice, so moving on...

After Disney we had dinner, walked along the Avenue of Stars to see handprints of people like Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, and tons of other Hong Kong stars we don't know. We stayed along the waters edge to take in the view of Hong Kong at night, then watched a laser show on some of the buildings across the water. Meanwhile, Beth plotted and planned how she could move to Hong Kong...

We packed up the next morning and went back to Shenzhen to see some old friends. We certainly didn't want to leave Hong Kong, but Shenzhen made us crave Yichang. So back on the overnight train. We stopped in Wuhan long enough to grab another Starbucks, then came back to our sweet Yichang.

It was a great short weekend, and I'd love to go again. I'm not sure what I would think of it if I hadn't lived in China before, but now it's the perfect little getaway. The perfect fusion of concrete and nature, East and West.

For more Hong Kong pictures, check out facebook. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2031523&l=ba669&id=147801990