HK, Day 1 - Exploring Wan Chai/Causeway Bay/Kowloon

Highlights:
- Our 14-hour flight was surprisingly short. Relatively smooth and painless. Loved that Cathay Pacific liked to keep us movie-entertained and fed (though I'm pretty sure that they like to keep the cup of noodles a secret. It's like the Secret Menu at Jamba juice or In and Out burgers. Unless you know about it, you'll miss out. Or maybe they announced it during my fitful 3-hour sleep.).


- Arrival at the airport and taxi drive to our destination was also smooth and painless (if one did not count how many times we did U-turns on the steep and narrow street, hunting for the seemingly non-existant 7A building). But it was a nice way to familiarize oneself with the street...again and again and again.


- Seeing family again. We miss them. Having the kids play together was cute. Maci had a baby sister and a big sister on this trip. She's always wanted both.


- Food is amazing here. Don't know how.  Don't know why. Maybe it's being in a foreign land and being excited about starting our grand family vacation that just makes everything taste better? Naw. Food is simply delicious. Not even gonna question the how and why. Just gonna eat it, as much of it as possible. In fact that's our vacation goal: eat our way where ever we end up. 


Safe landing
Once we settled in and reunited with family it was time to explore the city.

Arrival at the Hong Kong airport. 

Baby Calleigh exploring her house guests' bags.

Lots of cool-looking public transportation.

Waiting to take the MTR, their form of BART. Very clean and easy to get around town with it.

A bustling city filled with lots and lots of adds.

But let's move on to food.


Breakfast...

Egg custard shop

Second breakfast...

Beef jerky stand

Dim Sum for lunch.

The BEST BBQ pork EVER!!!!!

Chicken feet, David L.?

Fried squid mouth, David?

Bright lights, big city.

Dinner at Din Tai Fung.

This restaurant is known for it's delicious Shanghai dumplings (xiao long bao or soup in a dumpling).

After dinner entertainment at Victoria Harbor.

Light show never happened due to observance of Earth Hour. Still a pretty sight.

Finally, an exhausted, jet-lagged (or maybe just suffering from food coma) Lee family at the end of their first day in Hong Kong.

Low lights (a.k.a Waay Out Of My Box adventures):

- As we were strolling through the SFO International wing to our gate, taking our time to soak up the experience of actually being the ones to travel this time, I started to finally relax for the first time in a long stressful, pre-vacation week.  Bags checked in no problem.  Passed security no problem.  Boarding passes and passports in hand. All was going well. Big sigh of relief---until we heard "Final boarding call for flight 872". WTH?! How did that happen? Everything was going so well, so according to proper planning and preparation.  "Final boarding call..." That was the end of our leisurely stroll and steady blood pressure as we raced through the airport and down the escalator to reach the flight attendant. Of course we made it just in time. But man, I hate rushing like that. With proper planning and preparation, I truly believe rushing need not happen like that.  So unnecessary.  I was determined that wasn't going to happen again.  How little I knew what was in store for our family adventures...