There are some cities that I love. I understand that the English language does not have enough variations of the word “love” to fully encapsulate the meaning of the word in each way that we use it, (which, as I was just discussing with my mentee this week while going through C. S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity, I find to be a very frustrating limitation to our language when discussing theology) however, right now when I say that I “love” a city, I mean that I could quite possibly live there despite the fact that it actually is an urban place. I guess Shanghai counts (since I do live here) under this description, and I do love my life in Shanghai, but I do not, however, count it as one of my “favorite” cities in the world. The more I travel, the more I realize what a city must have for it to qualify as one of my favorites, and naturally, the more places I go the more places get added to that list. Currently, there are four cities that get to be on my Favorite Cities List.
The cities are:
The cities are:
San Francisco, CA
Guanajuato, Mexico
Queenstown, New Zealand
and now...
HONG KONG!!!!!
What do these four cities have in common, and what are my requirements for the list? I’m glad you asked!
· I’ve been there
· There are LOTS of hills. Up, down, everywhere! If I can consider walking around the city hiking, I'm happy. This is why Shanghai doesn’t qualify…no hills!
· There is nature accessible in the city or very close by
· There are brilliant colors everywhere
· The city is LAYERED! I love cities that are built creatively, with exciting stairways leading to alleys leading to secret gardens on rooftops or incredible views on the tops of hillsides!
· I’ve been there
· There are LOTS of hills. Up, down, everywhere! If I can consider walking around the city hiking, I'm happy. This is why Shanghai doesn’t qualify…no hills!
· There is nature accessible in the city or very close by
· There are brilliant colors everywhere
· The city is LAYERED! I love cities that are built creatively, with exciting stairways leading to alleys leading to secret gardens on rooftops or incredible views on the tops of hillsides!
Anyway, we really enjoyed our four days in Hong Kong. We explored the different islands via subway, a “Big Bus” tour, taxi’s, public busses, ferries, walking, and even on an old fashioned “junk” cruise! Hong Kong is very intricate, with every inch of space used for something, and they can get pretty creative sometimes! One of the aspects we loved about the city the most was that you could actually feel the history of the place, which is very unlike Shanghai. While Shanghai has the historic bund and a few ancient gardens and temples, everything else has pretty much been built in the last 15 to 20 or so years. Just ask Mama and Papa who came 25 years ago...they barely even recognize our pictures of the city! We especially could imagine the history of Hong Kong while we were winding around the coastline on our Big Bus tour. It was surprisingly fun to take a tour and explore the city and the coast as we listened to interesting facts about each place.
Besides the Big Bus, our first day in Hong Kong included the unique Stanley Market and Plaza (including a display of Lamborghini-Cows???), a ginormous slice of pizza for Steve, one of the most glitzy fashion malls we've ever been in (with crazy decorations to boot), and seeing Iron Man 3, which was incredible. That's a lot of fun for such a gloomy day!
Our second day started off with the Victoria Peak Tram, which was fun despite the fact that it was so foggy we couldn't see anything...but we had much more fun soon after when we hopped onto the Disneyland rail to spend the rest of the day zooming around on Space Mountain and Hong Kong's Grizzly Gulch Runaway Mine Cars!! We actually LOVED Hong Kong Disneyland. While it doesn't have as many "lands" as the real deal, what they do have is great! They have several things that the CA Disneyland doesn't...like Toy Story World, the Runaway Mine Cars, and an incredible Lion King performance that was amazing!! We thought it was also pretty fun to ride It's a Small World while in Hong Kong....it was just too perfect :) I think my favorite part of Hong Kong Disneyland (ok besides the backwards mine car ride...and the delicious caramel popcorn) was how smiley all the "cast members" were. The whole day was like one big It's a Small World ride because the Hong Kong cast members were just so happy and smiley!! Most of all though, I love being married to someone who enjoys Disneyland as much as I do...hee hee hee :)
Our next day was much more beautiful than the first two! We hopped on a ferry and checked out the Hong Kong Avenue of the Stars. We had only heard of Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and Bruce Lee, but it was fun to see everyone else there so excited :)
We then headed out to Repulse Bay, where we were leisurely enjoying the feeling of our feet in the waves again when all of a sudden we saw that BLACK clouds had rolled in overhead surprisingly quickly. I was in awe, but Steve knew what was up and was able to get out the rain coverings fast enough to save our stuff from the TORRENTIAL DOWNPOUR that turned the streets into rivers only minutes later. It was SO FUN! We quickly hopped on a bus and continued on to explore Hong Kong in the rain!
Fortunately, the rain storm passed over quickly, and we were able to enjoy our sunset date that night on a famous Hong Kong "Junk." I don't know why it's called that, but it's basically an old ship with red Hong Kong classic sails. It was definitely one of the most romantic boats I've ever been on :)
Our time in Hong Kong flew by way too fast, so we are determined to go again. There are still so many aspects of the city that we didn't get to experience, not to mention all of the potential hiking! We really enjoyed the combination of China and the West! This might be a crazy statement, but our frequent trips to the Great Wall might just have to turn into trips to Hong Kong....