Macau/China, Day 10/11 - Macau and Shenzhen

Plan for the day:  Ferry ride to Macau, check into Grand Hyatt, attend The House of Dancing Water show, gamble at night, Macau day speedy tour, ferry ride to Shenzhen, China.


Highlights:

- Beautiful and elegant Grand Hyatt stay.

- Fine  dining at a Portuguese restaurant: Dumbo.

- Beautiful and breath-taking water show. No pics. Put aside my camera and enjoyed the show: The House of Dancing Water.

http://www.macau.com/en/shows_and_events/579
- Delicious (if hasty) snack-tasting down the streets of Macau to reach the ferry bound for Shenzhen.

Grand Hyatt Hotel

Fine dining at Dumbo.

Exhaustion set in and I was too tired to pull out my camera for mouth-watering pics. By the time I pulled my camera out, this was all that was left from the well known restaurant...

Venetian Casino

Macau in daylight.

The very windy poolside.

Lunch at the Beijing Kitchen

More sightseeing after lunch...

MGM Macau

Nice leisurely family pic time before...

...the mad dash down these steps, through the crowded alley-sized streets to try to catch a taxi to catch the ferry to Shenzhen for more shopping.

Waay out of my box adventures:

- After checking into the Hyatt, we quickly made a mad dash for the Dance of Water show only to have the doors close upon our arrival because we were two stinkin' minutes late. Aunt Mary made a fuss about that! After a ten minute wait they re-opened the doors again to the impatient late arrivals. But those ten minutes were crucial to the full understanding of the show. Botheration!

- Losing my party in Macau was pretty scary--never mind it was at the beautiful grand Hyatt. Lost is lost.  Jim wandered off into the casino without letting the rest of the group know but I knew where he was going. The rest of the group wanted to go to lunch. Since I had an idea where Jim was I went after him, leaving the group standing in the front lobby. Ten seconds searching the large casino and I decided I wasn't going to waste any more time. I promptly returned to the group only to discover that they had disappeared.  No big party. No Jim. No good. <insert Bug's Life clip here> Trying hard to maintain a dignified calm, I went about searching for them, all the while mumbling again, "Walk around the leaf...There you go, there you go..."  I didn't find them in one direction, so I turned around and searched the other direction. Since the walk-around-the-leaf mantra did not work, I had to resort to self-taunting, "Maci and Josh wouldn't cry. Act like an adult and stay calm." I finally convinced myself if one had to be lost, the Grand Hyatt pastry shop was not a bad place to call Lost & Found. But I never made it there as I (thankfully) bumped into Maci and Nicole. At last. I was found. Full-blown panic and potentially awkward blubbering adult female scene averted.

- One late-to-the-ferry mad dash/immigration line-up scramble was starting to blend into another. But, as with all other mad scrambles, we made it to the Shenzhen ferry. Shenzhen shopping here we come. To make shopping less cumbersome, we checked in our Macau luggage at the 1st floor baggage check-in. We had plenty of time to shop. It was only 7ish and we had to collect our bags by 10:30.  After an exhausting day (and emotionally trying day for some who shall not be named but was almost lost), we were grateful to finally sit down to a Chinese dinner at a crowded and popular restaurant. It was a nice relaxing dinner until toward the end of it Mary jumped up and exclaimed, "Oh no! The bags!" then promptly gathered her belongings and ran out of the restaurant, quickly followed by an ever-aware Jim and his shadow Josh. The rest of us sat dumbfounded, only blinking at one another until Jim's return and sarcastic, "You guys coming?" broke our exhaustion-induced numbness. Up we jumped and off we scurried--once again. Turned out it was 10:50 and our luggage was apparently going to stay locked up in China.  But once again Mary pulled off the impossible--or maybe $$ did it--by getting the attendant to return all the way back to work to let us collect our bags. Amazing.

An exhausting day all around. Once again by the end of the evening, I was asleep before my head hit the  pillow. All this running around, is it any wonder why I haven't gained a pound in spite of our goal to eat our way through HK, Macau, China, and Bangkok?