Double Dragon Hong Kong

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Holy Toledo! We are incredibly behind on the travelblog. And after we started off so strong! Maybe it's actually a good thing - vacation mode isn't supposed to involve any deadlines or guilt about the stuff you're not doing, right?!
Anyway, enough remorse - time to put the nose down and blog away until we get caught up. I apologize in advance to you all if you get a barrage of emails notifying you that we've posted several new blogs. Consume them at your own risk (mainly to your productivity 😊 ...

So, anyway, here's a little taste of our Hong Kong experience...
We actually only spent two short stopovers there over the last few weeks, but it seemed like it deserved it's own "Honorable Mention". We first arrived back on March 20th, fresh off the gorge-fest/trip to Taiwan with Melissa's bro and sis-in-law that she wrote about, crying about the work-out regimen we had aborted and how we were going to get back on track. On arrival, we took the high-speed train into the city, an great piece of technology (oh, how I love technology!) in and of itself that immediately lets you know you are in one of the high-tech capitals of Asia (and, arguably, the world). Also immediately apparent is how organized the public transportation system is - the cab line from the train station is organized into little sub-lines that should handle a crowd very efficiently (pure speculation on my part, there was virtually no one there with us).
Kowloon, where we stayed for all 3 nights, is where most of the tourists go and is, in a word, insane. It truly never sleeps and there is Asian madness on steroids going on non-stop in every direction. The mix-master portion and the waterfront look like scenes from Blade Runner - really the only thing missing are the hover-craft criss-crossing the skies, which I feel certain will become a major part of the landscape there sometime in our lifetime. Shopping is the lifeblood of the place - you can find almost anything here, at any level of quality and price.

We took the "Peak Tram" up to Victoria Peak on Hong Kong Island as well - it's a ridiculously steep train /tram that scoots you up the peak in just 8 minutes (>1000 ft up) - it's like riding a train at the same pitch as a ski lift or a gondola. Of course, the whole reason to go up there is to see the magnificent views of the city. Well, unbeknownst to us, March and April are the only time of year that the Peak is shrouded in a heavy fog and you can't see anything. I don't mean you just can't tell what's down there, I mean you really can't even see that a city exists down there. Needless to say, I took a bunch of pictures anyway.

The other thing worth a brief mention is the delicious gelato/ice cream we found on the water front. As the little kids at Rob's school in Taiwan love to say, "It's SOOOOOOO..... GOOOOOOOOOOOOD" We slurped some down both times we were there and vowed we would go again should our travels take us back there (the second time we had an interesting conversation with a 60-something entreprenieur from the US who gave us a nice little dissertation on the evils of the Kennedy family and the merits of the Bushes - it was all Melissa could do to keep shoving ice cream in my face so I couldn't really engage)

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Photos

East meets West at night
Here's the great city of Hong Kong at night. They do this kooky, Disneyworld-esque light/laser show every night at 8 pm that's impossible to really capture with still photography, but just imagine all these colors shooting in every direction. Really dizzying!