Ellie Enchanted Part 2 of 3

A few years ago, Janna and Ellie saved their pennies and took a mother-daughter trip to Italy and France. It was a dream come true for Ellie. Rome, Florence, Paris. She loved southern Europe. That’s a pretty tough act to follow. But Hong Kong is a world-class city and can hold her own against any other major metropolitan area.

Okay, let’s do this. Bring it on.

We started off with a waterfall hike. The mountains and greenery usually catches people off guard -not what they expect to see in Hong Kong. We followed that with a visit to the village of Sai Kung with all of its fish tanks full of live seafood. Over the next ten days, we went from sun-up to sun-down doing everything on Hong Kong’s A-list, most things on the B-list, and a few things that aren’t on anybody’s Hong Kong to-do list but mine.

My philosophy was to throw as much of Hong Kong up against the wall and hope that something stuck. We rode the Star Ferry, visited the Peak, saw the Big Buddha, and walked along the Avenue of Stars.

I tried not to be too earnest. Nothing turns off a teenager quicker than an overly-earnest adult. But, occasionally, I would toss out what I thought were interesting little tidbits in an attempt to engage her imagination. “See how this temple has a big, free-standing furnace out front? That’s so the faithful can burn paper food, clothing, and money to send to their ancestors in the afterlife.” Then I would casually saunter off and stealthily glance back to see whether or not she was engaged.

More often than not she was horsing around with her cousins. Wherever we were, the three girls kept taking pictures of each other jumping off of stuff. They would find a bench, a boulder, a curb and then two of them would jump off, tuck their legs up underneath themselves, and raise their arms while the third one took the picture.

“Hey Ellie, see the damage here on this bronze lion? That’s from World War II when the Japanese . . .” Oops, never mind, you’re busy jumping off of a retaining wall.

Undeterred, I just kept trying.

Being a guy, I thought maybe the way for Hong Kong to win her heart was through her stomach –after all, it’s how my wife one me over. Throughout the week, I kept stuffing little morsels of goodness into Ellie’s mouth. The sweet, red-bean cakes seemed to have worked their magic; the fish balls not so much.