We walked through several streets/alleys in Central that were lined with stands/shops selling fruits, vegetables, meats, clothes, knick knacks and household goods. It was quite interesting. The prices seemed to be very good.
From Central we just kept walking down Hollywood Rd. towards Sheung Wan. We past many restaurants with every type of food imaginable! We even found three Mexican restaurants. We saw so many restaurants and Grace and I kept saying "Grandpa would like that one. Uncle Allen would like that one." etc. I'll warn you now that we'll have to wander a bit before finding them again:)
This time Grace and I went into the Western Market in Sheung Wan to see what it was. A tourist trap is all it is! There was some fabric on the top level, but we didn't venture up to check the prices. Here are a couple of pictures from Western Market:
Outside of Western Market there was a group of men playing some type of hacky sack. The sack looked like it might have been shaped like a chicken.
One of the other interesting things we saw was the Sheung Wan Market. I especially liked the sign depicting what is on every level of the market:)
Besides finding the "restaurant district" (as I'll call it), we found the "bakery district" in Sheung Wan. There was bakery after bakery! We went into a German bakery to get a couple of things. I am finding that just about every other country uses less sugar in their baking than the U.S. I like it!
I have yet to find the perfect map for walking around Hong Kong, so I have been using Google Maps on my phone. This is great, except for two things: it eats up the battery life on my phone and it has trouble amidst all of the tall buildings. Grace and I were in search of a bookstore while exploring. We found one easily, but it did not have the Hiking Hong Kong book nor the laminated map I wanted. So we used Google Maps to find another one close by. Well, it was definitely close by, but we wouldn't have known that! We encountered a couple of problems. Some stores are not on the ground floor and if you don't look up and over the sign of the ground floor store you are libel to miss what is above. Not every street is well marked. Google maps does not like tight spaces with tall buildings on both sides. We went on a walkabout, literally! We climbed up the hills towards Mid Levels to be turned around to head back down the hill. Walked around a little more until we ended up right back where we started and I happened to look up at the right angle and see the sign for the book store. The adventure didn't end here! We climbed the stairs, walked past the first door which looked like a barred door heading into a kitchen, up a couple of more levels with what appeared to be doors into apartments. The shoes outside of the doors were dead giveaways! Frustrated, we heading back down. Coming in this direction I was able to see a rack of books next to the kitchen (behind the barred door). Then it took us a minute to figure out that it was a sliding door. It was a neat little used bookstore though and I did find the hiking book I wanted.
After that adventure we started to make our way back to pick-up Meg. We were in search of the famous "Mid Levels escalators". Thankfully there were signs pointing the way towards these. They are escalators that take you back up the hill to the Mid Levels.
In this picture you can see everyone standing in line to go into the little covered area. That is one of the escalators!
After we picked up Meg we had Dave meet us for dinner at one of the Mexican restaurants that was more of a bar/dance club. The tacos and guacamole were good though! Dave and I shared Mahi Mahi and Steak tacos and the girls had chicken carnitas tacos. We'll try one of the other ones next time. I picked this restaurant because I felt it would be the easiest for Dave to find when coming out of the MTR. Well, I mentioned the streets are not always well marked. They also tend to take little jogs. He went a little past where we were, not far mind you, but enough to have him frustrated before I sent Grace to find him. Meg didn't appreciate the walk downhill to the restaurant from Mid Levels. This is why Grace has become my exploring partner. As long as I buy her an occasional drink or snack she will wander with me without complaint:)
PJ had stayed back to work at the baseball camp and because he had a game that night. We took a taxi home to make sure we were back in time for the game. They played a men's team and won with ease. PJ hit his first homerun of his high school career. It was a low, inside pitch that he sent over the right field fence.
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