Heart Happy (cathy_edgett) wrote,
Heart Happy
cathy_edgett

Tuesday Evening!



Late Tuesday Afternoon:

 

We decided to head out for a little walk and returned five hours later.  That’s Hong Kong.  We found a new street filled on both sides with hardware, plumbing fixtures, tiles, doors, lamps.  It was amazing.

 

We agreed that if we lived here, we would be ready to re-decorate.  We see things here we don’t see at home.  Also, it is lovely to walk along and have everything in one place.  No driving at all.

 

I love exploring the streets of Hong Kong.  There is no way to predict what comes next, or in what century you will appear to be. 

 

After a bit of wandering up and down, we found Pacific Place, and checked out the Schindler Miconic Ten elevator system at 3 Pacific.  Actually, Steve checked it out. I sat in the lobby and enjoyed the amazing array of women’s clothes and shoes.  

 

We walked out and sat by the flat fountain and oogled the glass cover over the entryway.  We decided it would be lovely to visit the Island Shangri La Hotel which it seemed we could reach out and touch.  We wanted to see the Great Motherland of China, the world’s largest Chinese landscape painting, housed in a 16-story glass-top atrium with glass elevators whizzing up and down.  There is an exquisite garden at the bottom.  Since we could see the building, we headed up a little path, which seemed to lead toward it, but then, we were caught and enclosed on a path that got steeper and steeper and went up and up and up. 

 

It is hard to understand why people need Stairmasters here.  We ended up at Kennedy Drive and circled right and circled round until we came to the upper entrance of the Hong Kong Garden.  We entered and continued enchantingly down through the aviary which is amazing.  600 birds reside inside this jungle garden.  Some are obvious and some you can be standing right there looking at the green, and then, something shifts in your eyes, and you see them, looking back at you.  They seem to hang-out in pairs or threes or fours, and it is amazing to watch the branches bounce as they prance along them.  It’s like the birds delight in making the trees move, like children bouncing a suspension bridge up and down. 

 

We came out into the park and passed beautiful fountains, and an artificial lake.  Gratefully, we stopped at an outside café for a pick-us-up.  Then, we saw another fountain, one that lengthens beautifully and then, has a carousel of water, which you can enter by crossing over on three flat steps.  You circle round, looking out through the water at the views.  Wow!!  Heaven!

 

Now, after hours of walking through exquisite landscapes with beautiful views, we were privileged enough to look up and see that the mists had parted, and we were allowed entry.  Shangri-La was revealed.  We rose up in one elevator, and then, we entered another one for the garden and rising view of the landscape painting.  At the top, we walked around and enjoyed more views.  There was a man polishing the leaves of green plants that line the rims of the railings of each of the sixteen floors.  That must be his total job, polishing leaves. Shangri La is like Fairy Land, only bigger.  Also, it has a library.  No one was in it, but books, and it is comforting to know it is there. 

 

At that point, we were tired and took a taxi home, where we now recuperate.

 

I saw two ants today.  I saw a bug for a moment the other day.  That’s it.  I have seen three insects this whole time, now eleven days in Hong Kong. You might not think I would miss them, but I do.  It is so beautiful here, but so much seems contrived and controlled.  Three insects and looking for more is where I am now.   I suppose one needs a way to balance their eyes on the views, and that is by looking for the lively small.

 

Paul Krugman has an excellent column in the paper today on Alan Greenspan and how he encouraged and supported Bush on tax cuts, and now that the Republican tide has turned, pulls back to criticize.  Does Greenspan truly think we didn’t wonder why he would not speak up before about what was so clearly wrong?   Now, he speaks about the Bush administration’s fiscal irresponsibility.  Amazing!   Conscience, anyone?   Memory banks?   There is more than one bank that could use some weight.  

 

We go to Macau tomorrow to overnight.  We will travel light, so both computers will stay here.  I don’t like being too far from a computer, but will somehow struggle through. : - )

 

We travel by ferry and are looking forward to a visit to this island that was a Portuguese colony.  We are told the food is unlike anything one has had before in its combining of colonial cuisines.  We are excited to see Macau, as it is said to have a European, rather than a British, feel.  The negative is the new casinos, which turn it into Las Vegas and beyond.  We’ll see.  We leave early tomorrow, Wednesday and return very late Thursday night.

 

 

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