Seeing Hong Kong

Two young couples from down the hall invited us to join them for shopping and dinner Friday night. When old farts like us get invited to join the hip, thirty-somethings for an evening out in the big city, who are we to say no?

We did a little street shopping and then had a late, oh-so-cosmopolitan dinner at 9:30 p.m.

(Dinner at 9:30? I’m usually in bed by 9:30.)

We were on the southern-most tip of the mainland; we couldn’t go any further south without being in the harbor. After dinner, we all walked down to the water-front promenade. We rounded a corner and there it was:

The city of Hong Kong.

All lit up.

It was breath-taking.

I’ve seen New York at night. I’ve seen Chicago at night. But this was something pretty special. The city was a sheer wall of buildings and lights that seemed to stretch indefinitely in both directions. Immediately behind the buildings was a second wall of steep, dark mountains. Some of the taller buildings rivaled the mountain peaks.

The coolest part of the vista was the giant –and I do mean giant- neon signs that hang from the sides of the buildings: Samsung, Sanyo, Espirit.

All of this –buildings, lights, mountains, neon- was reflected in the water of the harbor. The occasional late-night tug boat cut across the whole scene creating a mosaic of scattered lights on the surface of the water.

I’d seen so many pictures and read so many descriptions of this very scene, but they all failed to capture the power and beauty of what we were looking at.

All-in-all, it made for a pretty spectacular and memorable night out.
I'm looking forward to bringing our girls down here in the near future so that they can experience this.

But can we please go, now?

It’s way past my bed time and I’m really, really sleepy.

I can’t keep up with these energetic thirty-somethings.

-Jack

During our time shopping, we passed a wide variety of stores. My favorite shop name of the evening belonged to the store selling lady's undergarments: the Blah Blah Bra shop.