Catching Up...

Okay, I've been pretty slow getting my daily blogs online, and so this may seem a little disjointed after reading Patty's blog. So forgive me, I'm a day behind... I had a mother of a transcript that I had to finish which took precedence.

Speaking of mothers... HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOM!! (April 6)

Back to Thursday... After our trip to Stanley and its wonderful market - which Patty has already touched upon - we headed back Tsim Sha Tsui to see Sam the tailor for my first fitting. It's truly amazing to me that I can get a one-of-a-kind suit custom made for me in less than 48 hours!

Here I am looking like a giant with one of Sam's skilled assistants. (That's me on the right.) Anyway, you'll have to check back to see how the finished product turns out!

After a long day of walking through the market and then getting my suit fitted, Patty and I headed back towards our hotel and planned on getting a quick meal at our breakfast spot, the Cafe de Coral. However, when we got there, our attention was diverted to the Pizza Hut that just so happened to reside next door and so we ended up ordering a pizza. We could have ordered the exotic Duck a L'orange pizza, but instead we opted for the pretty standard cheese and pepperoni. Well, Pizza hut is batting .500 in Hong Kong... after a really good dinner two nights ago, our pizza arrived looking and tasting more like cardboard than anything else I've ever experienced.

This morning was the beginning of our last full day in Hong Kong and so we wanted to do something more substantial than just shopping. Since it was/is our 5th wedding anniversary, we had already made plans for dinner at a restaurant called Aqua in Kowloon. Our reservations were for 7pm, and I also had to pick up my suit after 5pm, so we didn't have too much time to meander about today.

We kicked off the day at Cafe de Coral with a light lunch rather than a breakfast and then decided to head to the island of Lantau to see the "Big Buddha"... It's a 110-foot bronze statue sitting atop a mountain in the village of Ngong Ping. After a 45-minute boat ride and a harrowing 45-minute bus ride... well, the weather gods must have had it in for us because when we arrived, the sky was filled with a thick haze/fog and so the full majesty of the golden Buddha had to be left to the imagination.

Here I am after climbing about a thousand steps, making the best of our weather fiasco... What a gyp!

I did manage to get some decent photos of some other statues... I'll let Patty post them.

Here's a picture of us at the base of the mountain in front of something we didn't take the time to figure out what it was we were standing in front of.

I still have to tell you how the suit came out, and about dinner, but it's getting late and we have to get up early for our flight to Japan. More to come...