Hong Kong Part 2

The train had a seperate car that took us from Sunny Bay to our next destination. Can you guess where we went after we visited Budha?

Disneyland Honk Kong! It just opened recently and I've never been to Disneyland so we thought we'd check it out. (Plus we are going to Disneyland California for Christmas with the kids so we wanted a chance to just do what we wanted.)

The price was just a little more than you'd pay to get into Lagoon, so we figured it would be worth it. There was a mini parade just as we were walking off of Main Street. They sang in English and spoke in 3 other languages. Pretty fun.
I was really missing the kids and wanted to have a picture with Tigger and Pooh (Olivia loves them). I couldn't find the actual characters at the park, so I settled for this pic of my head with them just before boarding the ride.
Here we are on the river ride. Our guide was hilarious speaking in his Chinese English :) This was our last ride before leaving the park. We were pooped after cramming our day and were also suffering from jet lag.
At the end of Day 1 HK, I was starting to get a blister on my foot. We walked everywhere while we were there, so this wasn't surprising. I think I did pretty well seeing as I didn't need any bandaids until the very end of the first day.
After a good nights sleep we were off to start Day 2 with great expectation and intending to fill another day. We started with a stroll down the "Avenue of the Stars". The umbrella BJ is holding is to shade us from the sun. It really really does help with the heat. We observed that a lot of locals use them and thought we'd give it a shot. After the first day of it, we decided it was nice, but a pain in the patuti to carry around.
This avenue is off of the pier just a short walk from our hotel. It's the Chinese version of the one they have in Hollywood so it was fun to find a name we recognized! As you can see from the wear, they love him there, as well. We actually had to wait in a short line to get this pic.
Jackie's hands are surprisingly very large. I could barely stretch my fingers to fit his hand span! It was crazy.
We were also able to find this legendary icon... fairly easily. They have a statue of him ahead of it on the edge of the pier. His handprints aren't there, because the "Avenue of Stars" wasn't built until 2003. (If you don't know who Bruce Lee is, he is considered by many as the most influential martial artist of the 20th century as he helped bring Chinese martial arts to the west. He was born in the US and raised in Hong Kong) I was thinking of my dad when we took this one. He was fascinated by martial arts and Bruce Lee is obviously a big part of that.
This is downtown Tsim Cha Tsoi (Like the West Jordan of Hong Kong--where our hotel was) on our way to lunch at a super fancy place... really. :) We wanted to check it out to see if they had a dress code (it was super close to our hotel) and they did. The men had to wear jackets and BJ hadn't packed one. He'd packed everything else, but that. So we decided to forego it and went to TGI Fridays.
Maybe this is a story of a little bit of culture shock, but it's funny so here's the experience: It was the worst american food ever...lol and the drinks were the most terrible thing ever. We typically love TGI Fridays back home, but something must've gotten lost in translation with how to make the stuff. It was quite interesting. I know they typically don't like sweet things there so maybe that's why our drinks were like water.
HAHA! The chef brought us our drinks and was walking around in a dirty white tank-top and an apron. Then there was this really mad little chinese lady who walking in with us and she yelled at the hostess as we walked up. The hostess looked at her like, "Who are you?" and stared after her for awhile. The lady just took off into the resaurant and up to the managers (I think) office and then stormed back out. It was hilarious! We were the only patrons there, but every employee that we saw was totally stunned at first and acted like they had no idea who she was. The only mad people we saw wer old chinese ladies, lol.
We headed back to the hotel to take a nap (that blasted jet lag) and laid down for a couple of hours, which turned in to many many hours. We didn't wake up until 8 PM. We were a little bummed, but my second thought was, "I haven't had a guiltless, let alone, good and long nap in 2 1/2 years. This is great!" So we lost a day. Well, a half a day. We headed back to the Avenue of Stars to see the biggest laser show in the world, which we missed. We tried to catch it a second time, but kept missing it, so we just bagged it. The buildings still looked cool because they still had the cool lights on them aftewards.
We headed to temple street after that to see what kind of stuff we could find. Temple Street is a really popular flea market. They had some fun electronics and the other typical touristy stuff you'd see in a flea market. There were hole in the wall resaurants lining the streets with card tables and folding chairs set up all over the street to accomodate the crowds. We were a little tempted to try it, but I was scared of what we'd eat, and told BJ and wanted to stick to "safe" places. I'm not that brave. :) To end the night we headed back to the hotel and ordered room service for dinner and watch Rush Hour.
That was actually really fun, too. Our hotel had really really good food from all over the world with strong asian influence, so it was interesting to try it all. Don't forget to check back for part 3! We did so much and had so much fun! If you don't want to, my feelings won't be hurt. I'm mostly posting this for memories sake and wanted to get it on here while it's fresh on my mind.