A room with a view!

Hong Kong is the land of very expensive, teeny, tiny hotel rooms. Since it was our anniversary, we went all out and did this trip for free! Thank you CSL for the flight and our credit card points for the room! Upon checking in, we mentioned it was our anniversary in hopes of a room upgrade. And lucky us, we got a 10'x10' corner room with a view!

No, not that view.....

This one! Now that's more like it! Hubba hubby!

We were sorely disappointed by the New Year's festivities in Hong Kong. The fireworks were absolutely pathetic. Actually we were both slightly disappointed by HK in general. We expected a sleek British/Asian version of New York, but found it to be fairly worn down, cramped, and not that enticing. Based on friends' rave reviews of Hong Kong, we walked around all weekend saying "I like Shanghai better. What's wrong with us? Are we missing something?" So I guess it is a good thing we're only a bus ride away from Shanghai and not living in HK!

In spite of it, we walked all over that (very hilly!) city and feel like we packed quite a bit in to two days. We drooled over the beautiful grocery stores but didn't buy anything because of the horrifying prices, then were equally amazed by the cheap $0.50 ferry ride from Hong Kong to Kowloon, where we then paid a staggering $70 for dim sum (this would be about $10-15 in our town!).

Bustling, odor-free market right outside our hotel

The view of HK from Kowloon

thought the lone sparkler was more festive than the actual show....

That's as exciting as it got....

New Year's Day we caught the tail end of a dragon dance in a local park.

We wandered thru the financial center of HK over to Lan Kwai Fong and SoHo, the two concentrated expat neighborhoods for a "home cooked" meal.

SoHo is so hilly they have outdoor escalators everywhere!

Even though HK wasn't our favorite, we now know what to expect and look forward to returning on one of our many visa-prompted trips. We didn't bother to go to the Peak because of the smog, nor did we make it to any of the jade, antique, food or night markets, which we definitely want to do. Other highlights include sane drivers, cheap, cheap public transportation, drivers that don't honk every second and not being stared at incessantly. It's all about the little things!