Early Morning Tourist

Tonight at the shabbat dinner table i "hit the wall," and started falling asleep with little hope of continuing to follow the conversation. Jet lag has officially hit, and I'm exhausted.

To start with, I woke up around 5am because I was still on Eastern Standard Time. We got an early start and swam to The Flying Pan (located on Old Bailey Street) for a traditional eggs and toast breakfast. There were three tired-looking guys in the booth behind ours, from Canada, New Zealand, and the UK. I talked to them for a few minutes, receiving recommendations on where to go and what to see in HK. The guys looked like they had just had a LONG night, so i left them to finish their coffee and went back to my table to order breakfast.

After ordering and consuming way too much food, we wandered from Soho to Central to see the HSBC headquarters building. On the way, we passed the famous drinking pit, Lon Ki Fong (LKF). The HSBC headquarters building was unbelievable! Very cool structure. Then we continued walking to the World's Oldest Tram to get up to the Peak, a giant observation center. The observation deck wasn't open yet, so we wandered around outside. We saw beautiful butterflies, plants, and a man selling grasshoppers made from palm fronds. There was even a lovely sitting area overlooking the city courtesy of the Lions Club of Hong Kong.

We paid 20HKD to get up to the observation deck, from which we could see a panoramic view of the entire city, plus the other islands and mainland China. After gazing at buildings, mountains and the gorgeous bay, we wandered back down to the apartment. By "wandered," I of course mean we hiked down an incredibly steep hill through country park. The thing about country park, though, is that it's lined on both sides with man-made rock walls to prevent mudslides and erosion. These walls have moss-type things growing on them, but they are very obviously not real rock. The effect is an odd feeling that you're at a zoo.

We had dumplings for lunch, and i tried a mangostein for the first time, and then went to Shabbat dinner at a friend's apartment nearby. I could barely keep my eyes open during the meal. On the way home from dinner, we came across a group of white cats lounging in an alley. The cats were perched all over the ground and on various objects in the alley, and each cat had a shortened tail. Tomorrow we will go on a junk boat for the afternoon, with wake boarding and chatting and reading.