Hong Kong!!

Finally, I get a rainy day where I am "stuck" inside and am forced to work on my blog. :) So lazy, am I! Really, though, I have been surprisingly busy with friends having babies, play dates, school stuff, visitors. Such a life. ;)

The first week of October here is the Mid-Autumn Festival. Couldn't tell you what it's about but I can tell you the Chinese get a week off of work (so we do, too) and they eat mooncakes. What are mooncakes? They are small (maybe 2 bites), they have a poundcake-like outside with any variety of filling. Could be nuts or fruit or egg or beans or even meat. I bought a few from the store and we tried them out. Thankfully I had not bought the egg, bean or meat ones. I think they had nuts, but I'm not really sure. :) Anyway, they weren't very tasty so we didn't even finish them.

On Friday, Sept 28th, our family flew to Hong Kong, a Chinese city that is so NOT Chinese! A fairly short flight- less than 3 hours, however, we were delayed in the plane for almost 2 hours so it made for a longer journey than we had hoped. We went stright from the airport to Hong Kong Disney. Our reasoning for packing so much into one day was that Disney was really close to the airport and very far from the hotel and the city. Disney held our bags for us and off we went. It was really hot that day (prob almost 90) and very very sunny with little breeze. This Disney is the smallest one, I believe, but it was the perfect size for the one day we had to spend there!

Here's Soph going into Disney-

Just after the entrance, a huge Mickey made out of flowers. The building in the background is the train station that has a train that went all around the park.

Strolling down Disney Lane. I think Ben was just as happy to be here as Sophia was. :)

Approaching the Princesses Castle. Big moment!

One of the first things we did was go to meet some characters. The first was, of course, Winnie the Pooh, Soph's favorite! However, what surprised us was how much Cooper loved him! He looked up at Winnie and laughed and held his arms up for Pooh to hold him. He wanted to touch his nose and feel his fur. We had to pry him off!

From there we moved on to the Winnie the Pooh ride. A big hit with both kids (and the grownups)!

After that ride we headed for lunch at the only American restaurant we could find. We got a great seat by the window that overlooked the main road through Disney. What we didn't realize was that there was a huge parade starting with all the Disney characters! We watched from the window for a bit.

A tiny portion of the parade. It really was amazing!!

Sophie calling out to TinkerBell.

Moving on to the Space Mountain portion of the day. We didn't go on the actual ride- I think Soph would have totally freaked, so we decided to try out the Buzz LightYear ride instead.

Inside the Buzz LightYear ride. Coop did really really well and Soph loved it. I couldn't get Ben to stop shooting things and let Sophie win. :)

Soph with her Princess Minnie ears enjoying the Buzz ride.

From there we headed to Adventureland. This was where we found Tarzan, the Lion King and many more.

We saw a quick 30 minute Lion King musical. Really good!

We were very impressed with the dancing, singing and the props!

After the Lion King show we took a tiny boat ride across a lagoon to Tarzan's treehouse.

Inside Tarzan's house-

It gets dark fairly early here, around 630 or so. Ben got this great picture of the clouds and the castle.

Almost at the end of the night we decided to do "It's a Small World". Poor choice on our part. Poor Cooper had had enough and this simply put him over the edge.

Evidence of Cooper being "done". We got on the ride and he proceeded to thrash around and yell for the whooooollllee trip through the whhoooollllee small world. It's not nearly small enough when you're stuck with an over-tired toddler...  :(

A little shout-out to the Dutch heritage...

Soph and I, however, did enjoy the ride.

All day Sophie had been asking for cotton candy and we hadn't seen a single stand for it. Finally, after riding the teacups, we saw it. They used a glowstick as the wand. She was in heaven!!

SO much we've already done and we're only on day 2 of 5! We woke up the next morning to Sophie opening the shades, looking out of the hotel window and declaring, "It's Hong Kongish, VERY Hong Kongish"! Great view from our room! To the left you can see the channel that seperates Hong Kong Island (where we were) from Kowloon (mainland).

 

 

Another view of our room-

That second morning had a really rough start. Our intention was to find this American diner called The Flying Pan to have breakfast. However, the taxi dropped us off at the wrong place (we thought), there was this super drunk guy hanging out in this entryway, and everyone was hungry! We got a 2nd taxi that brought us to another wrong location and then things weren't looking so good. I remembered seeing this other restaurant down the street with Westerners in it and decided to try that out instead. Turned out to be a great place- Oo La La was the name. Several waffles later we were ready to head out to Ocean Park.

This was a great sight on our way to the restaurant. This 80-something year old lady dragging big boxes down the street to who knows where. Maybe this was her workout for the day. Amazing!

On to Ocean Park. Another big theme park with rides and games and an aquarium.

At the entrance to the park. Cooper just loved the water fountains!

Once inside the park, we first came across the big aquarium and decided to check it out.

A huge fishtank with random floating sharks (?)

We decided to take the cable car to another part of the park to check out some rides.

A view from the cable car-

It took us up and over a mountain to another area of the park.

It gave us a great view of the Bay. So pretty!

Cooper's favorite part of the day- the escalators! China as a nation is not, in any way, wheelchair or stroller accessible. Thankfully, strollers fit on the escalators and we use them all the time. SO different than in the U.S. where you'd get in serious trouble for doing this!

Sophie and Ben went on this arctic chill ride that was too fast for Coop so he and I went and explored the penguin exhibit. Inside there was this weird seal-thing that he thought was hilarious. Most of the kids were afraid of it but he thought it was funny!

The penguins.

Coop loved the exhibit, especially the see-through floors when the penguins swam by. It was also about 30 degrees in there so it was a great place to cool off from the heat!

After the one ride we discovered that most of this area of the park we were in was for much older kids. We headed back to the other side of the park to a great kids area. Unfortunately, this is where Cooper fell asleep in his stroller so while he rested Soph and I enjoyed an apple slushy.

After about 45 minutes Coop woke up and was hot and still tired and not happy. He didn't want to play so we decided it was time to head home.

On the way out Sophie got her gift to remember Ocean Park- a stuffed pink dolphin she named Coco.

 

 

That night we went to a restaurant at the advice of some friends who used to live in Hong Kong. It's called Dan Ryan and, yes, it's based after a Chicago eattery. It was wonderful!! Chili and hot dogs and mac and cheese and burgers. Home food that actually tasted like home. It was really really nice.

 

 

After dinner it was straight to bed after baths for the kids. Ben and I actually went to bed around 8 that night as well. So tired from 2 big days and still 3 full ones to go!