"And her naaa-aame was Cassandra..."

Hong Kong is awesome! After the amazing pork bao at breakfast (discussed previously) we hopped the Star Ferry and made our way to the island of Hong Kong. Sneaky and I had never been, Fritzy was privileged enough to have spent a summer working there (although nearly a decade ago) so he played something of a tour guide to us, for which we were all very thankful. I was amazed by how hilly the city is--it's basically built into the side of a mountain, and it looks like some kind of bizarre, post-modern hybrid of San Francisco, London and Tokyo.

Despite the heat and humidity, we hiked more than half the way up to Victoria Peak. We kept telling ourselves this was 1) Good for us, as we had just spent 16 hours on a plane; 2) The coolest climate we were going to be in the entire trip, so we'd better acclimate.

Along the way up, we paused at the Hong Kong Zoo and Botanical Gardens, but it's quite tragically nothing special. I was hoping for pandas, but the best they could come up with were buff-cheeked gibbons, which sound more like a Shakespearean insult than any kind of real animal. Also, the Reptile House seemed to lack reptiles. In fact, in seemed to lack animals of any kind.

The view from the top of the Peak is stunning. You can see the entire Hong Kong skyline and harbour (note the British spelling), as well as across the South China Sea to Kowloon Bay (where we stayed, and most notably, where Cassandra was born.) Unfortunately, it was rather muggy so our photos will be a bit cloudy, but I'm sure I'll never forget the Hong Kong skyline, because it's absolutely breathtaking.

On the way down, we hopped the Peak Tram back into the center of the city. It looks and feels a bit like a roller coaster, and most notably, at one point, it stops at a perfect 45 degree angle. We were all too petrified to stand up, much less get out at this stop, so you can imagine how amazed we were when a woman who clearly must have been a local threw her toddler on her hip and jumped off while the tram was parked at such an incline.

All in all, I'm definitely glad we stopped in Hong Kong, and I'm hoping we spend another day there on the back end. The city itself is a metropolis on steroids, which is pretty impressive to this New Yorker.