Mike, Dave & Sue follow The Lions 2013 (3)

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Up and out of the Nathan by 9.30am and sightseeing begins. We were intending to use the Hop on -Hop off bus tour but found it didn't start till 11.30am. In fact they must have been cancelled due to the weather as we didn't see one all day. After 20 minutes walking the heavens opened and we had a torrential downpour for half an hour, standing in shelter we people watched as pedestrians played puddle hopscotch.

This became a recurring trend throughout the day as it rained on several occasions. Never mind, there were lots of places to get out of the rain, including the HK Heritage centre and the huge, well laid out Ocean Centre mall. Mostly high end designer clothes and jewellery / watch stores. All were over staffed with bored workers waiting to make that one big sale of the day.

The view of the HK Island and its skyscraper waterfront was good from the Walk of Stars promenade which, of course was heaving. Every hotel maid in HK seemed to have the day off and were out taking happy snaps. It must be an Asian thing, it seemed they all had to do a Winston Churchill V for victory salute as they posed!

Back to the Nathan for a siesta and a rest of our weary plates of meat before a return to the Ocean Centre (by £5 Taxi) where we had Pizza Express (Calzone for me) sat at a window table watching the Symphony of Lights show played out on the skyscrapers of HK Island. The walk back to the hotel was punctuated with fending off the many cheap watch and silk suit venders.

Wednesday was more walking, toured the Kowloon Park, full of girls school parties. We saw the Mira Hotel, in the news as the hideaway of this weeks CIA whistleblower! We kept a sharp eye out but didn't see him. Tea time found us at HK Airport checked in for our flight to Sydney. Spicy beef noodle soup for tea, yum!

The plane was only half full for the red eye flight to OZ, couldn't have made a profit. At Sydney we bade farewell to Val as she headed off with her daughter who came to fetch her. We were impressed that half the Sydney Police force and about 20 Traffic bikers on Yamaha patrol bikes turned out to escort our Taxi into town until we were told they were there for some Chinese dignitary instead 😞

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