The Guangzhou Restaurant

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Friday, 29th March 2013

Happy Easter Friday

We continued to make inroads into our Guangzhou trip this morning. First up was a fantastic dim sum breakfast at Guangzhou Restaurant, about 10 minutes walk from our apartment. While the prices did not come in cheap, the three of us agreed that this was money well-spent for the freshly made dim sum in a traditional setting.

Our journey continued to the riverfront along Pearl River where the massive Canton Tower was located. Easily one of the highlights of our trip, we were impressed by the architectural feat of this modern, mega structure as well as the tastefully decorated promenade that was virtually crowds free.

Tip: To capture the best view of Canton Tower, take the APM Line to Opera House station. Also within a short walk from the station were the new Guangzhou Museum and a huge public library.

There was some shopping to be done in the afternoon as we landed at Haizhu Square (Yi De Road) where most of the wholesalers in the city were concentrated. What greeted us were floors and floors of shops selling crafts, stationeries and fashion accessories. My minor gripe was the complete lack of food options for the tired shopper to rest and recuperate from all the walkings.

While the wholesalers welcomed the occasional shoppers like us, they didn't appear too determined to sell their wares to individual shoppers. In a way, this worked perfectly fine since there were no pressures from either parties to close the sales in an "emotional tugger". For most circumstances, the asking prices from the vendors were oftened modest compared to the hefty prices we would be expected to pay back home.

In between our shopping shopping excursion, we freed up sometime for a quick visit to the nearby Shishi Sacred Heart Catholic Cathedral before the skies turned dark. As the nice pictures turned out, this was worth the extra efforts getting there inspite of the rain.

The plan to have our buffet dinner at Garden Hotel was abandoned as the prices were clearly out of our budget. Nevertheless, we spent a while admiring the grand lobby before heading back to Taikoo Hui Mall for a nice dinner @ Hee Kee that came with a great service.

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