................Taking Flight...............: Happy New Year!

Watching the fireworks display in Hong Kong was a great way to ring in 2015. I believe I'll be calling 2015 the year of travel, as I am currently in another country and have 2 other trips in the wings and another 3 countries tentatively planned.

After the fireworks, we walked back to our hostel and called it a night!

For our first day in Hong Kong we decided we would just go exploring a bit. First we took the subway to the "mainland" part. There we went in search of a particular restaurant in a mall complex to have a Cantonese breakfast. We finally found it and realized it was a little bit out of our budget range. We walked around in the mall and settled on another dimsum restaurant instead. Mike and I ordered 4 or 5 different kinds of dimsum (dumplings) to try. After our brunch, we then did a walking tour on our own (using TripAdvisor) to go through all the different kinds of markets. We saw a fruit/veggie market, jade market, bird market, flower market and goldfish market. We also passed a park with a temple inside so we stopped there as well. The bird market was pretty cool-tons and tons of birds and birdcages hanging up.

Round 1

Round 2

Round 3

Round 4

Some fruits in the market

Fireworks for sale

IT'S SO FLUFFY!!!

In the jade market

I remember these rolly jade balls my Dad got from Hong Kong!

Park

One of my all time favorite photos-in a temple

Goldfish street

Turtles for sale on goldfish street as well

Orchid street smelled heavenly

At the entrance to the bird market

Birds for sale

Last on our stop was a Hong Kong history museum. I was surprised to see that Japan had also invaded Hong Kong and brutally ruled over them during WWII as well. It amazes me that the Japanese had so much control of so many countries, being a small island themselves. After the museum, we wandered a bit and stopped in a Starbucks for a snack.

Old ship model in museum

We went to another restaurant for dimsum dinner and then went back to the area we started our morning in. There, the Sky 100 building has a great view of the city. We went up to the top floor and stayed there for an hour or so. It was really pretty. Then we took the ferry back across to the Island. That was a fun experience.