Hong Kong, day 3

I did take photos yesterday, but I took so many more today, that I am skipping yesterday, in favor of these much more exciting ones from today. Matthias and I went into the city and saw the goldfish market, the flower market and the bird market. WOW. It was a good day. The gold fish market was so so SO cool!!! If you are a fish person at all, and you ever get to Hong Kong, put this at the top of your list. The only thing I didn't like about it was the fact that I found two EXTREMELY cute and fat goldfish that I really wanted, and I couldn't buy them. There were walls draped with plastic bags full of fish and water, tanks galore. There were lots of adorable tiny turtles and even frogs! It was amazing. What is striking for me is how many shops there will be, right next to each other, all selling the same merchandise. Try to imagine about 6 or 8 blocks of fish stores, all lined up in a row. Crazy. The whole place smelled like a giant aquarium. There were saltwater tanks, too.

The flower market was close to the fish market. Except that we forgot where we were supposed to go, so we ended up walking back to the subway, where the map was, so that we could get our bearings again. The Chinese New Year celebrations are coming up soon, and so the flower market was packed with citrus trees and orchids, I guess in preparation for the celebration. The smell and colors of this flower market were intoxicating. Talk about eye candy. I was surprised at how many of the flowers I still know the names for, since I worked in the flower store before we were married. I have never seen so many orchids together in one place, and that includes Hawaii. It was spectacular. There were throngs of people, and it was slow going, walking by the flowers. We did buy some tuberose, as a time machine of smell, to transport ourselves to Hawaii once again. They are in the bathroom now, in a plastic water bottle, and the fragrance has infused this entire hotel room. Fabulous.

The last stop downtown was the bird market. For us, this wasn't as exciting as the fish or flowers were. I have always had a bit of an issue with birds as pets. They are supposed to FLY. But I did really enjoy the wooden bird cages, and the sacks of bird food that the wild birds had discovered and were taking full advantage of. You could also buy grasshoppers of any size here, but I forgot to take a photo of that.


The subway was crowded today, since it is Saturday. Everyone out and about. So here is a photo of that, too. The subway here is wonderful. It is easy to use, since the signs are in Chinese and English, and it is really clean. I find it even cleaner than the metro in Paris! Impressive.


There is more to come, just you wait and see!