Some people are con-noisseurs of fine wine. Others con-noisseurs of food. Gary, our friend from college, is a con-noisseur of the world’s great cities. He has traveled fairly extensively, but he also knows amazing amounts about cities he has never been to. He knows know more about Johannesburg, Tokyo, and Sydney than a lot of people who have visited those cities. His favorite t.v. show is the Amazing Race where teams of two compete in what is essentially a global scavenger hunt zipping from one major city to another looking for clues. In fact, several years ago, Gary and his brother-in-law actually went so far as to send in an audition tape to the show.
So when Gary emailed us and said that he had managed to re-arranged his business itinerary so that he would have a day in Hong Kong, we were pretty excited not only to see a long-time friend, but to introduce Gary to a city that he said had been in his top three cities to see for as long as he could remember.
As a family, we’ve spent the better part of a year exploring HK, so the trick was how to give Gary a taste of Hong Kong in just eight hours. We started out by having dim sum for lunch. We rode the subway, the Star Ferry, and a cable car down Queens Road.
And of course, no trip to Hong Kong would be complete without a trip to The Peak to take in the spectacular views of Hong Kong. The four of us had just gotten off the Star Ferry and were trying to figure out where to catch the bus to The Peak, when Annika, Elise, Gary and I found ourselves surrounded by a frenzy of activity. A middle aged man and younger woman in matching yellow t-shirts and backpacks were feverishly looking for something. A bus? A train? Apparently, they found what they wanted, because all of a sudden they took off down a flight of stairs to the street. It was then that we noticed the two guys with television cameras and the sound guys holding boom microphones. It was all over in less than ten seconds. It all transpired so fast that I only managed to squeeze off two pictures.
What was that all about? Our confusion turned to excitement as it dawned on us that we had just witnessed the taping of an episode of The Amazing Race.
Crazy. You plan for a week the tour that you want to give to your friend and then something like this happens that we could have never have planned in a thousand years. How cool is that?
See what amazing experiences await you when you come visit us in Hong Kong.
No comments:
Post a Comment