We've just come back from a very lovely weekend in Hong Kong. Lee surprised me by booking the flights and arranging the plane tickets without my knowing. I knew something was up when I started suggesting things to do for this, our first long weekend, and eventually guessed his plans. It's a very romantic, and much appreciated.

We may have set a record for the least amount of shopping by anyone in this mecca for shoppers. We came home with a refrigerator magnet and one postcard. We also came home with some wonderful memories and some stories to tell, with photos as visual aids in the telling of said stories.

Let me start my story telling by introducing you to a woman we met on the bus on our way to Victoria Peak. We got on a city bus to take us to the tram but didn't know either how to pay or how much it cost. This woman sitting near the front of the bus rummaged around in her purse for some coins and paid for us, told us where our stop was, how to walk to the peak tram and then wished us a lovely stay in Hong Kong. I thought all the nice people lived in Taiwan but it turns out there are quite a few who live in Hong Kong too.

I could also tell you about how we got lost on the subway but I'll save us the embarrassment. Suffice it to say, it was all our doing as the subway system is fabulously easy to use, clean, with excellent signage.

We spent the whole morning on Saturday walking around Victoria Peak. The peak tram takes you up to the summit and we then followed the path that circles around the peak. About halfway around the mountain we turned off the main trail and spent a couple of hours walking through the woods and over streams. Here are the photos to go with the hike.

The tram station at the summit.

Lee taking in the view of Victoria Harbor.

Hong Kong in the foreground, Kowloon in the background haze. 

The summit trail was beautifully maintained.

The second section of our hike was less traveled and a bit more rugged.

Later in the day we walked from our hotel down to the harbor and admired the Hong Kong skyline.

Daytime view with Victoria in the background.

The same view after sunset.

Across the street from the hotel was Kowloon Park, where we spent Sunday morning before our flight home. It's a fabulous space with statues, ponds, a series of swimming pools, an aviary, fitness equipment and lots of people exercising. Here are your visual aids.

The avenue of cartoon character art.

Flamingos

We finished our trip with our first real airport snafu since we started all of this traveling. We've been lucky with all of our flights (in our first 12 months in Taiwan we flew on about 20 different airplanes) and this mess-up was pretty minor, all things considered.  Our flight was cancelled and we had to hang around the airport until they found us a new plane, which took about three hours. Considering the flight is barely more than one hour it was annoying to have to wait for so long. But we did get a flight and now we're home in time for the Moon Festival fireworks. More on that tomorrow.