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We had great intentions for the day, we planned to walk up to Victoria Peak and get a view of the city, but after waking up, and peaking out the window, we decided to sleep an extra few minutes. It was hazy, and going to be very warm.
After stealing an extra bit of sleep, we got up, chugged some water, and headed out. We road the bus to the Nan Lian Garden which is a very nice curated park in the middle of the megalopolis that is Hong Kong.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nan_Lian_Garden
As far as i can tell it is either very new, it was built in 2006 or was overhauled at that time (later edit, it was built in 2006 as a joint effort between the government of HK and the Nunnery i mention below). Either way it was pretty spectacular.
They even had a “rockery” which is a rock garden of sorts. Apparently a new type of rock was discovered in China that has rock collectors going nuts. This park had a series of these rocks on display, with some aphorisms scrawled above them, that i think lost some of their poignancy in translation.
This park directly led us to a nunnery accross the road.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chi_Lin_Nunnery
we ate our quickmart pastries on the steps just outside the garden because the signs said no food in the garden.
This is an active monestary with shrines and nuns and monks roaming about. as seen in the pictures they also had some of those special rocks, they also had various bonsai trees, and lilly ponds.
I did not include any pictures of the shrines themselves, as again there were no pictures allowed. But mostly they were large wooden statues with gold leaf of various buddhist deities. The place smelled of incense and lillies, despite being very near a major thoroughfare it was very tranquil, and the shrines were large and splendid, but not as awe-some as the cathedrals of Europe I have toured. I think this is due in part in the differences in philosophy these institutions have developed into today.
alot of catholicism seems to be big for the sake of being big, peoples tithes, and state patronage build large often ostentatious displays of wealth, I interpret it to be an attempt to bring the splendor of heaven to earth.
But it seems buddhist temples are about honoring the deities themselves, people bring offerings in the form of food, and incense and money. they are certainly beautiful but not as awe-some (i over use awesome, when i use the hyphen i am trying to use the more technical dictionary definition of inspiring awe). The catholic (and many of its derivatives to include the bits of islam i have experienced) temples feel very imposing, but the buddhist temples simply are, and you experience them at your pace.
After this we headed back into the shopping and market area of the city. We wandered around mostly aimlessly, just experiencing the sights and sounds and smells of the city. We found a few gifts to dole out when we get home, and a few snacks to eat while wandering.
Laura had discovered another good chinese restaurant via her blog/pinteresting that we decided to hit for dinner. The place was inside a mall, which i must point out is by no means a bad thing over here, just a noteworthy point.
The place was pretty good, we got an order of their sweet and sour cucumber skins, which were exactly what they sound like. They werent particularly spectacular, but they were an excellent palette cleanser for the spicy food that momentarily hit our table.
We got a spicy pork dumpling plate, and these were spectacular, very very spicy, but very tasty. and then for my main i had their Dandan noodles, and laura had a pork broth soup with more dumplings.
My noodles were delicious, it was very heavy on the peanut oil, so it tasted very much like spicy peanutbutter, by the end of my noodles i was sweating. Laura wasnt particularly enthused about her noodles, they were good, but i think we have been spoiled by the delicious porkiness of all the Ramen we had in Japan.
After this we were looking for some ice cream or gelato or frozen yogurt to soothe our stomachs, and we checked out the gelato place in the mall, it was was way to expensive, so we resolved to go home. On the way out we spotted a Yo Mama frozen yogurt place. If you know me well enough you have probably heard about how much i love red velvet frozen yogurt, and how there is a frozen yogurt franchise in milwaukee that has that flavor, that always seems to mysteriously run out, or get pulled hours before i show up to eat it.
So we had to check it out.
i dont think they are affiliated, and they didnt have red velvet, i had Hokkaido Milk flavor, and laura had Earl Grey tea flavor.
we ate this on our walk home, and settled in for an early night, as we had a very early call for the cruise the next day.
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