the farewell tour

All right. This is a long one, folks. But I tried to keep it peppy, so as to avoid blogging you to boredom.

Let's hope it works! (And if it doesn't ... lie, people, lie!)

But without further ado, here's "the farewell tour" of our trip.

First up, The Peak, which is a hilltop view of the city.

Isn't this beautiful?
We dined with this (well, a version of this*) as the backdrop —
ooh and ahhing all the while.
*Confession: This fancy photo was NOT taken by yours truly.

But first, we had to ride a tram to the top,
which travels upward at 45 degrees.
Here are Mom, Dad and I waiting for the ride.

Next up was Ocean Park, which is an amusement park filled with rides, aquariums and ... (drum roll, please) ... pandas!

Is it just me, or is he smiling at me?

Unfortunately, Mr. Smiles was the only active panda in the bunch.
Meet the rest of his family: The Lazy McLazersons.

We got our inner-child on and posed with a man in a shark suit.
We rode cable cars to the other side of the park.
(Hong Kong is very hip when it comes to transportation.)

And we went to the Jelly Spectacular, which truly was spectacular.

Then, Adam finally got some "street food."

It wasn't his first choice of who-knows-where-that's-been-and-ew-what's-that-smell "street meat," but the sweet potato would have to do.
Pretty potatoes.

And finally, we saw Big Buddha, nestled in the mountains of Lantau.

To get there, we once again had to ride by cable car, which was completely ensconced in mist.
So we rode along, enjoying the misty memories, when suddenly the cable cars stopped dead in their ropes. Now, one of the cable cars (sans people) had infamously fallen to its demise during a test run a year or so ago. So when the cable cars stopped ...
... Adam did this.

... and I very calmly and rationally freaked out.
(Sadly, the above photo is not a dramatization.)

Luckily we made it (phew!), and we saw this beauty up close.
But not until we climbed 256 stairs to the top.
(Yeah, I counted.)

The good news is rather than admit we were tired, we just stopped for well-timed snapshots. Genius, eh?
Oh, and Adam took to Asia's tradition of flashing the
peace sign in Every. Single. Photo.

So long, Hong Kong.