Monday, May 20, 2013

HK Hearts Rain

All it's done for the past several months has been to rain.  And be miserable.  And then rain some more.  If it's not 99% humidity, it's because it's raining.  And not like a little bit of rain, like India during monsoon rain.  It wasn't this bad last year!

Other than getting wet, there hasn't been a whole lot going on.  We had a 3 day weekend (thank you, Buddha) so Paul and I did a wee bit of travelling.  Friday we got some studying in and then went over to Jackie and Justin's for a lovely rooftop BBQ.  Luckily no rain!

Then Saturday we got up fairly early, MTRed it to the Macau Ferry Pier in Sheung Wan, and wow is it soooo much easier going to Macau from the Island than it was from Kowloon.  From Kowloon you had to MTR to TST, then walk through the swarms of 20000 mainland tourists, then hope to get the next boat.

From the island you go right up from the MTR to the ferry pier, there's some dude at the top of the escalator selling discount tickets and you walk right in and onto your boat.  Waaaay less people, waaay less hassle.  An hour ferry later and we're in a new country.  Amazing.

First we hit up the Macau Wine Museum.  Since I'm studying Port and Madeira, and since Macau is an ex-Portuguese colony, it seemed only right to make this a scholarly excursion.  The museum itself was pretty small and not too informative (well not at this level, I spose) but had some interesting vines, barrel, and bottles to look at. But the best part was for sure the wine tasting at the end.  For ~$5usd you can taste 6 of the wines; 3 of which were fortified.  They were all of acceptable (not good) quality and it good practice for me to lead Paul in a very formal tasting :)

We then went for lunch and found this cute little place, Escada.   Octopus salad, croquettes, whole sardines, and some cod veggies.  <3 Portuguese food. 

To continue with the studies, I had read that there would be a New Zealand wine tasting at the Galaxy, Macau's newest casino, so we hoofed it all the way to Cotai (South Macau island) only to find out the tasting was the day before.  Whatever.  We walked around the casino, oohing and awing at the ridiculousness, had some milk tea on the floor, and decided to hit the Venetian. 

We quickly lost our $100 each allotment (I didn't realize my first bet was $50- Chinese slot machines!!!), and decided we'd had enough with the casino.  We walked from the Venetian down these super cute cobblestone roads, and found the sweetest little road of amazing little restaurants.  Who knew Macau had so much character!?

Ham and cheese plates served alongside port and wine.  I will never go to the casinos again, these restaurants are way more fun (and probably cheaper!) and have so much personality.  After eating entirely too much, we head home on the 9:30 ferry.  Although barely because most of the ferries had sold out-aye.

Sunday Funday.  We did absolutely nothing.  Nada. Not one thing all day except catch up on shows and bad TV.  It was amazing, and needs not to be repeated for a while.  I hate feeling like you've wasted a day.  I did wake up totally fresh on Monday though....

and now it's raining. 

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