Cruise Line: Princess Cruises
Destination: Asia and the Orient
Date: June 7 - June 27, 2004
Guest Contributor: Helen
hbrubeck@hotmail.com
Hong Kong
We had a fantastic time here! We were the first to disembark at about 8 am (ship was early). We docked Kowloon side at the Ocean Terminal and were right next to the Star Ferry. It took us 10 minutes to navigate through the Harbor City shopping mall though! It cost us about US$0.40 to take the ferry across to Hong Kong Island (if we had been seniors we would have been free) and it was very fast. When we got off the ferry (at Central) we walked to the Victoria Peak Tram (about 5 minutes walk) and took it up to Victoria Peak (about US$4 round trip).
The train was the steepest land vehicle (ie: not suspended) I have ever been in. The views at the top were terrific and as we were getting on the tram to come down we saw all of the Princess Tour Groups coming up. :-) When we got off at the bottom we walked through the middle of uptown to get to the midlevels public escalators. We arrived just at 10 am so they were still going downhill so we rode to the bottom and visited the tourist information booth there for some maps. Then we took the now-reversed escalators to the top! We walked down, meandering through some more 'traditional' shopping areas (Hollywood Rd., Upper Lascar Rd.) seeing the antique and herbal markets and the Man Mo Temple.
When we got back to downtown we grabbed a bus to Aberdeen, which is a 'fishing village' on the south side of the island (US$0.60 per person each way). Of course it is more commercial now but this is where you see all of the Chinese boats in the harbour. We were constantly pestered to ride the sampan boats (one saleslady followed us for 10 minutes!) but we took the free boat out to the 'famous' Jumbo Floating Restaurant. We walked around there for 10 minutes (and found the Princess Tour Groups eating lunch) and then took the free boat back.
I think we got all of the experience without being ripped off! After walking around Aberdeen a bit more we went back on the bus to Central Hong Kong. We got off and walked to Hong Kong Park, which is very beautiful. It is incredibly landscaped and is in the middle of all of the downtown high rises. They had a fantastic aviary (free) that we went through and an equally interesting conservatory (also free). However the star of the show was the Teaware Museum in the old colonial Flagstaff House (free too), but only because of its fantastic air conditioning. :-)
We then wandered back to the Star Ferry and went back across to Kowloon. We went through the landmark Penninsula Hotel and the ritzy Nathan Rd. shopping areas and got to Kowloon Park. This wasn't really worth the trip since it wasn't nearly as nice as the Hong Kong Park. At this point we were exhausted (no lunch, 6.5 miles of walking over 10 hours in 95F heat with 99% humidity) so we went back to the ship. We got back an hour before departure.
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