Today was our day to do our first hike in Hong Kong. Rich had done research on hiking in Hong Kong and this hike was considered by most to the the best urban hike in the city. We took a 20 minute train ride to the supposed beginning of the trail. The trail is called Dragon's Back and is located in the mountains of Hong Kong. The trail started at the Cape Collinson Catholic Cemetery entrance. What this entailed was climbing up hundreds of steep stairs to get to the trail. It kind of reminded me of when I was young and my family climbed the Washington Monument. Rich is not a big fan of stairs, and felt like he had already done the trail by the time we climbed to the trail. The first part of the trail was level, paved and easy. Indeed, the review that we had read said that the trail was very easy. The paved area ended and we entered the woods and began seeing mountain views. What we also saw was that we were going in one direction and everyone else was coming from the opposite direction towards us! And when I say "everyone else", I mean a lot of people. What we had anticipated would be a tranquil break from the hustle bustle of the train station was in reality a train station on a mountain trail! Mainly, we saw large groups of young Japanese tourists!
I must say that Rich was very apologetic and realized that the directions he had gotten were not the best. Obviously, the trail is supposed to start at the end opposite of where we had started. However, I suspect that Rich may have purposely done this so that we could get mental as well as physical exercise. The other surprise about the trail is that it became more difficult, with large rocks going down and up the trails. It would be considered a moderate trail for most experienced hikers. The distance was 5 miles. Just as Rich hates stairs, I hate extremely rocky trails, particularly when numerous hikers are squeezing in next to me. Thankfully, I had the hiking poles that Allison had given me for Christmas. I must admit that the glorious views at the top were worth it all! It was like Asheville, but with ocean as well - spectacular! If we included time spent walking in the train stations to get to this trail, our total walking was 8 miles by mid-afternoon!
This brings me to another piece of information that I want to share with those contemplating travel overseas - rent an apartment. It is great to have a home base to come back to and chill after all of the walking and site seeing. We spent the rest of the afternoon in our apartment after the hike. A hotel room can be nice, of course, but is usually not going to have the 600 square feet that we have here. And it also help you feel more like like a local. We went through Air B and B.
We decided that we deserved to travel by taxi tonight, and it was great. Taxi rides are cheap and easy to get. We ended up in SoHo again, not too far from the escalator across town. This place is still lively, even on a Sunday. The name of the restaurant was Aberdeen St. Social Club. The food was really good, and we sat on the balcony overlooking the wonderful night city views. Rich enjoyed his duck, and I enjoyed my sea bass. This was one of our more expensive meals, but worth it. We also had dessert and were treated to delicious chocolates as well.
Our final destination was salsa dancing at Xperience in our Wan Chai district. We did salsa here 5 years ago when we were here. It is a fun dance club and the dancers are pretty serious salsa dancers. But it was great fun, even though my quads were burning a bit because of the hiking. If we included the salsa dancing, we did a total of 12 miles of walking for the day! I will be eating more dessert from now on! End of week 1 in the great city of Hong Kong!
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