Hong Kong

Last week we were very blessed to be able to take the kids on our final Asian vacation. We went to Hong Kong Disneyland. We left on Tuesday, which happened to be Kayla's 9th birthday and we returned after midnight on Friday.
Hong Kong was not what I pictured at all. I thought it would be much like Singapore, a big city, with the apartments on top of each other and very much the big city. I guess it is still a big city, but it was very mountainous (is that a word?). Everything seemed to be surrounded by or coming out of mountains, including apartments. I thought it was very neat.

This was the view from our hotel...you can see the mountains in the background and the white thing in the picture is Space Mountain, a ride at Disneyland. We were only about a five minute bus from from the theme park. Another thing I was surprised by was all the water surrounding Hong Kong, I wasn't expecting that either.

We walked out the back gate of our hotel and this was the sight. We didn't know we were right on water!
We did have some very "Disney" experiences as well...

Our first day we explored at our hotel and then went to DisneyLand Resort and rode ALL the rides...

And had our picture taken with Minnie Mouse!

The kids were not into having their pictures taken with all the characters this year, which was a shame because all the lines were short!

The second day we took a cab ride into Hong Kong, going over a LOT of bridges, to explore the city.

We started at the Peak...a great place to really see the city. But, first we had to take the tram up the mountain to get to the peak...some pictures going up:

When we got to the peak we walked around a bit and took some pictures. We also found this little playground for the kids to play on:

After we played for a bit and took some pictures we got back on the tram. Nobody had told us that when you went back down the mountain you went down....backwards!!! I was feeling a little green. The only funny part about it was Elijah sitting beside me saying, with lots of drama "We're all gonna die! We're all gonna die! The train is going too fast, we're all gonna die!" And me trying to shush him not knowing how everyone else was going to take his comments. But, it was really funny. I'm giggling as I write this.

Once we made it down the mountain, alive, we got in another taxi and took it over to a ferry, boarded a ferry and headed for another small island that Noah's Ark was on. (It was surprising to me that Hong Kong is a lot of little islands.)

The view from the ferry, not very good, but it's what we got ;)

Pictures from Noah's Ark:

After we had spent some time with Noah's animals we decided to head back to our hotel and swim. We figured we'd just grab a taxi and be on our way. Nope, no taxis were allowed on this particular island. We had to find a bus, get money for the bus and then take it. We finally got on a bus and ended up at the airport...oops. Not where we were wanting to go. At the airport we got back in a taxi and had it take us to our hotel.
We did make it back in time to swim:
Elijah coming down the slide...

Kayla's next...............

Our final day at Hong Kong we got to spend with Lucia, Kayla's best friend from Nairobi, her brother Aidan, who Elijah used to play with and their lovely mom, Jenny.
Kayla was so excited to be reunited with Lucia:

And Elijah was pretty thrilled to have another boy to hang out with all day:

This one tickled me so much! He's doing what your supposed to do when you see a sword stuck in a rock, right?!
We had a great time and we are thankful for the time we got to spend with old friends. I'll attach some random pictures at the end for those of you who have not gotten bored and moved on...

  

"Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows." James 1:17