Weekend Sightseeing

On Saturday, Mark hired a car and driver and with six of us in tow — Grandma, Grandpa, Mark, Clarita, Noah and me — we took off for Sai Kung, a former fishing village in the New Territories:

Here are Grandma, Mark and Noah at the pier:

One of the seafood vendors at the floating market:

A woman cleaning octopus on the boat:

After walking along the pier, we headed to one of the numerous seaside restaurants for lunch. Here are Mark and his dad, picking out our lunch:

Grandma and Grandpa testing out their chopstick skills:

Happy after a huge lunch of fish, crabs and shrimp:

After lunch we made the long drive back onto Hong Kong island and went straight to Victoria Peak. While Grandpa, Grandma and Mark went up to the observation tower, Clarita and I stayed behind at the playground with Noah:

Here is Noah’s new (and painful) way of going down slides:

After our busy Saturday, we decided that Sunday should just be a laid back sightseeing day. So I’m not quite sure what in the world we were thinking in taking his parents over to Stanley market that day. The market was swarming with people — locals and tourists alike. The restaurants were also spilling over with customers but we managed to find a seat at one of the Italian restaurants along the seaside for a quick lunch of burgers and pizza. After lunch we were ready to brave the market again. We bribed Noah with a toy to keep him cooperative but a toy will only keep a three-year-old occupied for so long so Mark, Noah and I headed out to the promenade while Grandma and Grandpa finished up their shopping.

Here are Mark and Noah enjoying the view:

And Noah running back to me after playing on the rocks with Mark:

Catching Up: The Last Day

After taking a full week to recover from jet-lag, the rest of my time in CA just flew by. After Marine World, Monday saw a trip to Zachary’s Pizza — the best pizza ever and therefore a noteworthy event in itself; Tuesday I had lunch with a couple of friends from high school, and before I knew it, it was our last day in CA already.

It was just me and Noah on Wednesday so I semi-planned a day full of visits to some of my favorite haunts in the Bay Area. We woke up to a beautiful, misty morning:

and after a small breakfast, drove straight to Fourth Street in Berkeley. Our first stop was The Pasta Shop for a little specialty grocery shopping:

We picked up some baking supplies to take back to HK with us. I also picked up some chocolate that I wanted to send to my friend Kristin (because they were vegan and one of the chocolates was shaped like a Buddha) but Mark ate them when we got to HK. Sorry K. But it’s the thought that counts, right?

Then we hit my favorite taqueria next door, Tacubaya:

There are few things that will take the chill out of a chilly morning better than a hot bowl of chicken tortilla soup. Mmmmmm.

Noah, naturally, refused to eat either the soup or the quesadillas, but at least he liked the horchata. Afterward I bribed Noah with a toy and got him to come quietly to my favorite shop in the area, Anthropologie:

Unfortunately a remote control triceratops toy only bought me enough good behaviour to find a new wallet but it was better than nothing. Noah fell asleep once I got to Bay Street in Emeryville so I had a nice hour of quiet shopping. Of course we made the obligatory cupcake stop before we left:

When we got home, my mom had a surprise for us — one of my favorite foods. Ever:

Noah refuses to eat crabs but he likes playing with them so it was a win-win situation all the way around.

So that about sums up my visit. It was way too short, but I’m glad we got to spend a lot of time with my family this time around.

California Academy of Sciences

If I had one non-shopping-related thing on my agenda for our trip back to the States, it was a visit to the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco. At first I was a little bummed out at the thought of going because the Academy looks so awesome and I knew that with Noah in tow, I’d probably only get to see the toddler explorer cave at the most, but my parents and my sister ended up coming with us and with their help we were all able to keep Noah focused on the good stuff.

The Academy isn’t just a museum. After 10 years and $500 million, the Academy opened up in its new location in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park just last month. Not only is it the world’s greenest building — with each element of its construction designed to limit its carbon footprint — but it’s also the only museum in the world that contains an aquarium, a planetarium, a natural history museum and a rainforest all under one roof. On top of all the cool science, the food options inside the Academy are managed by Charles Phan — chef of The Slanted Door in SF, which is consistently named one of the top Vietnamese restaurants in the U.S. — and Loretta Keller, of Bizou and Coco500 fame. Like I said, it’s completely awesome.

From CA Academy of Science

Part Three: Last Resort (lots o’ pictures)

…the Club Med Resort, that is. Pun (unfortunately) intended (and now I’m thoroughly embarrassed about it).

For the Great Barrier Reef leg of our trip, Mark and I ended up booking a week at the Club Med Lindeman Island. Partly it was out of ignorance: the Great Barrier Reef stretches over 1400 miles along Australia’s eastern coast and neither of the two guidebooks we bought had very clear sections on the area so we weren’t sure where to go or how to get there. And partly it was out of laziness and convenience: our Club Med package included transportation to/from the airport, accommodations, all of our meals, all of our drinks (including wine and beer!), childcare and free access to most of the resort’s amenities and activities. Of course, they had us at “childcare” — we imagined ourselves drinking on the beach or snorkeling together instead of having to take turns and we were sold.

Our Aussie Adventure, Part One: Sydney

PROLOGUE

Mark, Noah and I are back in Hong Kong after spending the last 9 days in Australia — three in Sydney, six on Lindeman Island. And after an 18 hour return journey that began on a boat, continued onto a plane, followed by a train, another plane and an automobile, we are finally back at home. Which means we are sleeping in a comfortable bed again, staying cool in the subtropical weather and have ready access to a computer with an internet connection. Ahhh. Now let the blogging begin…

House o’ Mouse

We had originally planned a trip to Hong Kong Disneyland on Wednesday, but owing to some pretty crappy weather all week, we ended up postponing the trip to Friday and hoping for dry weather. Friday came along and it was perfect, albeit it a bit on the really hot side, but at least it wasn’t pouring.

Hong Kong Disneyland gets a lot of flak for being small and kinda wimpy, but for a toddler it’s the perfect size. We were able to make it around (almost) the entire park during the six hours we were there and the rides were tame enough that Noah could ride pretty much everything. And because we went on a Friday, it wasn’t too crowded so we were able to go on several rides a couple of times.

Here are some pictures from our trip there.

At the Kite Museum

On our last full day here, I wanted to take Noah back to the Children’s Castle that Mark had taken him to over the weekend but they were closed on Mondays. Plan B involved taking him back to Sunshine Aquarium, but they were also closed on Mondays. Plan C was to go to the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum, but surprise surprise, they too were closed on Mondays. I finally found one child-friendly site that was open on a Monday so it was off to the Kite Museum for us.

Noah, for some reason, is obsessed with dragon kites right now, so it seemed like a good outing for him. It was a tiny museum located on the fifth floor but was interesting nevertheless. They majority of their collection consisted of Japanese kites, but they had such a variety of them — postage stamp-sized kites, kites shaped like boats and planes, kites with woodblock designs painted on them. Japanese kites are made of an incredibly beautiful and sturdy handmade paper called washi and framed with bamboo. Here are some of the kites that we saw…

Pedestrian Scramble

On our way back from Yoyogi Park (because Mark and I are such mean parents) we took the long, meandering route back even though Noah was aching to get back home. We wove through the busy streets, popping into a store every now and then, but mostly enjoying the sights.

I saw these and immediately thought of my friends Jae and Alicia:

And if there are any Iron Chef fans (original Japanese version) out there, can you tell whether or not this is the Chairman? I say, “Yes” and Mark says, “Ehhh…maybe…”

People Watching at Yoyogi-Koen

Yoyogi-Koen is one of Tokyo’s largest parks. Although it lies adjacent to the Meiji shrine, which Mark and I have been to a few times, we’ve never ventured into the park. Saturday was bright and sunny so we thought it would be a good time to check it out for ourselves.

Besides just being an incredible expanse of green space, it was a great place to just chill out and people watch. It was full of people out for a walk, tossing frisbees, having picnics and impromptu jam sessions. There is no way I can do justice to the atmosphere at the park so I’m just going to post a lot of pictures instead.

Kiyomizudera Temple – Kyoto

After dinner, Mark took Noah up to the room to put him to bed so I went downstairs, hopped into a taxi and headed to Kiyomizudera Temple. I had been to Kiyomizudera on my last trip to Kyoto, but never during cherry blossom season and not at night. Parts of the temple were lit up until 9:30 pm specifically for cherry blossom season.

In hindsight, sending out the English-only half of your party at night to do some solo sight-seeing probably wasn’t the best idea, but if you’re going to take some safety risks, Japan is a pretty good place to do it since it has a much lower crime rate than the U.S. My cab driver was hilarious. I very obviously did not speak Japanese and he didn’t speak English but he still insisted on talking to me during the ride and pointing out famous sites. Most of the time he spoke Japanese sprinkled with some incomprehensible English words but I did manage to catch him pointing out some good places for cherry blossom (sakura) picnics (hanami).