Victoria's Peak

One of the highest areas in Hong Kong is "Victoria's Peak".  It is listed in all the travel guides for Hong Kong as "must see".  You can take the tram to the top, or you can go by car/bus.  Nancy and I took a Hong Kong city tour as a Semester at Sea Field Trip on Monday, and Victoria's Peak was the final destination by bus. As long as you notify the trip leader, you can leave a trip at any time, so we decided to to stay at the top when the rest of the group departed.  Our friend, Theresa, joined us at the top, and we started the 1 1/2 mile hike around the top.  The views were spectacular.  About half-way around the walk, Nancy notice some stone steps leading up toward the peak, and she and I headed up to explore.  Theresa continued on the road, and we kept in touch with walkie-talkies that I had brought from Virginia.  We kept climbing and climbing--thinking we were getting to the top--until we finally reached the peak--at least 1/4 mile higher.  Then it got really spectacular with a little garden and an observation area 360 degrees. This was one of those cool serendipity things that happens to everyone at some point while on Semester at Sea.  We finally got back to the tram station at the same time as Theresa and caught the steep tram down.  It was a 3 ear popper ride down.

Our Hong Kong tour had started that morning with a history of Hong Kong lecture by a local retired banker.  Then we hopped on the ferry and went across to Hong Kong island where we learned about some of the architecture and the incorporation of Feng shui. If you overlook the fact that Hong Kong has done a terribe job of preserving its past architecture, you will still be impressed by the current offerings. We went into the HSBC building ( a bank) with a pivoting mirrror on the outside that keeps natural light coming into the building.

In the main Post Office, we saw a huge mosaic on the wall.  It was made entirely from canceled postage stamps.  Try this if you have some extra time and a bunch of stamps lying around.
The we walked around some of the places that Nancy and I had already walked the previous day.

  We also tried out a foot massage.  This one was a self-massage from walking on small rocks set in concrete for that purpose.  In my view, it did more harm than good.

After our walking tour, we climbed on our bus and headed to the back side of the island to see the old fishing boat area and take a ride on a sampan.  This area is now used for more high-end yachts than fishing boats, but we did see some interesting boats.  Very few fishermen actually live on the boats now.

 

 The tour ended on Victoria's Peak.  After we took the tram down, we walked around and had dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant to get ready for our next port. The ferry back across got us back on the ship around 10 pm where we found a bunch of the students headed out to a big outdoor party back on the island.

Some of the crew were enjoying an evening off.