Irina, thank you! Alfredo, thank you!
I would have never imagined Hong Kong in such a way: Boats that sail right into the center of town… Graceful steel and glass modernity. Ultra-chic glamour… An architect's paradise… Grocery stores with Gold Medal flour, Dreyer's ice cream, Hersey's chocolate syrup, brie from France, Canadian maple syrup, a million types of olive oils from the Mediterranean, and unbelievable varieties of rice, noodles, & mushrooms. Plus a zillion things I had no idea what they were, nor had I ever seen them before, and that Non-Italian Alfredo (born in Hong Kong) was no help.
"Coconut shavings from the sea?" I asked him.
His off-the-cuff reply, "Never heard of it."
As I walked down another aisle I wondered to myself… "Did he eat at Mc Donald's growing up? Na, couldn't be… he orders great Chinese cuisine dishes from the menu at each meal… maybe he is pulling my leg about what he knows."
What amazed me about Hong Kong:
2) Sidewalks above the city center's streets with walkways directly into office buildings and shops.
3) That crazy drivers are NOWHERE to be found.
I rarely heard a horn honked,
Or someone race down the road,
even the air smelled clean!
Oh brother Mathew, Hong Kong is an architect's paradise!
5) Gigantic billboards. The use of video screens in advertising on the streets, light show designs at night on most of the skyscrapers.
Awesome! And if you have a cell phone you can hear the music that goes with it!
6) Skyscrapers… the skyline….miles long, and certainly miles higher than anywhere in the world.
7) Hong Kong is hyper-clean. A person could wear white clothes, roll on the ground at any of its construction sites and not have a speck of dirt on them. A person could lick the car tires, lick the street, lick the garbage cans and never taste dirt, or catch a germ.
I didn't see any graffiti, nor a gum-ridden sidewalk, nor a single piece of trash on the ground. Not even a cigarette butt. Incredible! Lick-able dirt-free city.
Do you know that in Hong Kong they wash the truck's tires in the construction sites before they roll on the road so that the tires do not leave dirt tracks on the pavement?
8) The fashion. The tailored clothes. The style, and elegance of the business suits down to the children's uniforms, and the high heels with knee socks, to the wedding dresses (pink!) and the maid's apron bow.
9) Boats, every imaginable kind floating right into the center of town. The ferry boat is a must!
9 b. (I never could count in a straight line.)
The food.
The other night we went to an Italian restaurant, Hong Kong is not a straight arrow when it comes to cuisine, instead, it is a melting pot of deliciousness. At Bistecca, the Italian restaurant that we went to with Alfredo and Irina's French Husband had Pumpkin and Sage ravioli, I had calamari.
10) Friends' generosity of heart and soul.
Notes:
* Great hole in the wall local fare: Big John's.
* Glass bottom ski lifts to Lantau Island to see the biggest Bronze Buddha in the world.
* 45 Hong Kong sightseeing tips your guidebooks won't include.
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