Hong Kong | Day One

Ready to start hearing about our summer vacation? Good, me too ;).  Fair warning - there are tons of pictures and it will take me a couple of weeks (at least) to get through them all, but let's start with day one.  On July 19th, we were up bright and early (think 4:30am) in order to catch our 7am flight to Hong Kong.

We are working on nailing our peace sign ;).

I love a blue sky with lots of clouds - it means an adventure awaits.

Still working on our peace sign when we landed.  Just by the way, we were gone for 8 days and we took flights on 4 of those days - the girls aced their flights.  They slept, they played and they barely cried (lollie included ;)).

This is the first time we had decided to stay at an airbnb and overall I would say our experience was just ok.  It was an authentic Hong Kong apartment and might have just been a teeny bit more authentic than we bargained for.  On our way back through Hong Kong, we stayed at the airport and we will likely do this again - it was perfect for our needs.  Once we arrived at the apartment, the owner's mom met us with the keys, we dropped off our stuff and headed to find some lunch - at McDonald's.  This McDonald's tasted much more like US McDonald's and a lot less like Chengdu McDonald's and was perfect.  After lunch,we headed back to the apartment to grab the girls a nap.  They were restless and excited to be on vacation and I might have lost my patience but we made it through nap time.  About 3 or 4, we were up, dressed and ready to explore.  We walked to the metro station and looking back that was our apartment on the harbor.

Our first metro ride!

And guess what one of the metro stops was named? Can you see it??

Austin ;).

Hong Kong used to be a British colony and so you walk on the 'wrong' side.  Completely floored the girls - you also drove on the opposite side.

Our first touristy thing was riding the Star Ferry - typically many people use it for their commute everyday; we used it so we could get a view of the city from the water.  On our way to buy our tickets, we saw some street performers.

Reminded me a bit of being back in Spain.

On the ferry and apparently still practicing our peace sign ;).

Such a big world out there and I am so glad that I get to be the one to show it to her :).

Loved spotting that ferris wheel.

And the girls were obsessed with this rainbow boat and immediately wanted to take a ride on it.

This is what the boat looks like that we were on - we were on the second deck (I think it is slightly more expensive and mostly for tourists ;)).

The ride was over before we knew it - these two loved watching us 'dock'.

And wanted us to take a picture of this pirate ship for grandpa.

Our ferry stopped at Central Pier.

Where we got a better look at that ferris wheel we had spotted on our boat ride.

We stopped at Starbucks and opted for a chocolate/banana frap (it is so fun getting to try the different country specialties, but we really miss a good white chocolate mocha); it was so hot outside and the drink was so cold and delicious.

And Everly decided she wanted a bear. Girly wanted every.single.stuffed.animal she saw on this trip - we were quite the party poopers when we didn't buy her a bear ;).

We talked to the friendly Starbucks employees to see the best way to get to the Peak (the highest point in Hong Kong) and decided to take the local bus.  We had to wait for quite some time before the bus came and so we played a couple of rounds of 'I bet you can't show me your best smile' for the camera.  I was quite pleased with the results ;).

Ev's was quite good at not smiling.

Almost caving.

But not quite.

When we hopped on the bus, Everly fell down almost immediately and needed some consoling.

Nothing a few smooches and a strawberry cake couldn't fix.

So much love for this baby girl of mine.

The bus ride was looooongggg and through lots of traffic (but at least with fantastic scenery as we went up, up up) and these two did a great job at playing with each other and keeping us all entertained.

We made it!! But the funny thing is we weren't quite sure exactly where we were, because I had told the person helping us with directions that I wanted to ride the cable cars up.  So funny story, we got in line for the cable cars for Wes to discover that we were at the peak and the cable cars were only going down. So we hopped out of line and took a look around.

The sky turned dark and we got to watch the city light up all around us.

It was the perfect timing to have made it to the top.

We even got to see the ferris wheel all lit up from the top!

These two continued being ridiculously cute.

Wes and I talk about this all the time, but we just love that they have each other on this adventure - a built in bestie to share all of these experiences with.

We went up to the tippy toppy peak and there were loads and loads up people, so we pulled out our selfie stick and Wes got these pictures.

Very sparkly and New York-ish.

We grabbed some dinner/ice cream and went back down to the cable cars only to find out it was more than an hour wait.  We decided to cut our losses and take a taxi back to where we were staying - we were waking up early for Disney the next morning!