After sleeping well in our hotel room we decided to go find some good egg custard tarts (pasteis de nata) and Kuniko guided us to a nearby place that was pretty renowned. We arrived about ten minutes before they opened and already someone had lined up. We got in line behind them, while sort of sitting on the seats outside the shop. An old guy was smoking nearby and we had to jump in line before he cut ahead – he was a typical rude old guy. But the tarts were delicious – I had mine with coffee and Kuniko had homemade yogurt. The tarts were super hot and it took almost ten minutes for them to cool enough to eat, but we really enjoyed them.
From there we checked out of our hotel and walked across town down narrow streets, taking in the architecture of the locals and enjoying (slightly) cooler weather. Our destination was a train station on a newly built train line with connections to the airport and ferry terminal. We got off at Pai Kok, a historic area that had a different vibe from all the casinos. We arrived a little too early to have lunch at our chosen restaurant, so we walked through the village (more shops selling beef sheets), and then through the Galaxy Casino to take advantage of the free air conditioning. The casinos in this area were newer and more like the ones I was used to from Las Vegas.
While walking through we took a break sitting on the marble walkway next to some other tourists, and watched people taking pictures of the grand fountain. Soon a security guy came by and rousted us all off the way with a great expression on his face – like “sorry, but I gotta do this…”
We talked our way into getting drinks at a “Paris-style” bar – the staff all wore French maid outfits – and enjoyed a drink there while waiting for the restaurant to open. Once it did, we went to the Restaurante Litoral Taipa, which specialized in Macanese dishes. There we had potato cakes as appetizers, saffron-stewed pork, and minchee – a surprisingly tasty dish of richly flavored minced beef, fried potato cubes, and egg served with rice. We really liked this dish, and it was the dish that I had the lowest expectations for.
After lunch we had time to kill before our ferry back, so we walked through some of the big casinos in the area – the Venetian, the Parisian, and past the Londoner and Studio City Macau. It was Kuniko’s first look at the gaudy cheesiness of these kinds of casinos – a good life experience, I think.
From there we caught the train again, and moved on to the ferry terminal. As we walked again through immigration and to our boarding gate we dodged drips of condensation from the ceiling – apparently the temperature differential showed off an inconvenient design flaw. It was like walking through light rain.
The ferry trip back was smoother than the coming (less barfing) and soon enough we were back in Hong Kong and catching a train to the Sheung Wan area west of Central. We walked about ten minutes from the station to our hotel (the Ibis) and checked into our smaller room – after our last beautiful hotel room the change was dramatic.
My target for dinner was to go to the Graces Restaurant in Causeway Bay, to try to finally eat the holy grail of dim sum (for me, anyway). I had confirmed they had it on the menu, so we took a busy train to the area to have dinner there.
Once we arrived at the station it was super crowded. It turned out that the day was a big celebrity’s birthday, and all his fans had come out to show their support. It was a bit nuts as we tried to maneuver our way through to find the restaurant. Eventually we figured it out, and found the right place. Unfortunately they weren’t open yet, and a quick consult with the manager revealed that they don’t serve dim sum for dinner anyway. This is a traditional kind of place, so we’d have to come back tomorrow morning.
So as an emergency backup Kuniko found a dumpling place nearby and we had some great soup dumplings (they had so many choices of fillings) and also some dumplings stuffed with crab and seafood that really hit the spot.
After that we took the train back to near our hotel, where there was a huge traffic jam and people all over the place – it was a busy night in Hong Kong. As we walked back to our hotel we noticed that the area was filled with shops specializing in dried sea life – for medicinal and culinary use. There was shop after shop – apparently competing with each other. One shop we saw had a cat sitting atop some of the displays, who must have really hit the kitty-cat lottery to get to hang out in there.
We considered hitting one more restaurant for the night but in the end the weather was turning bad so we decided to stay in and eat/drink snacks from the local convenience store in our room. As it turned out a huge storm hit that night, pounded the side of our building and window and flashing lightning for much of the night. Glad we weren’t out on the street!
