Macau!

After two full days in Hong Kong, on Monday morning we headed off to Macau, by ferry.  It’s only an hour ride, you can buy tickets at the last minute, and it worked out perfectly – unless you love gambling (which we don’t), you really don’t need to spend more than a day in Macau.

What I was most excited about Macau?  To eat Portuguese food!

Sadly, that was the one thing I failed to accomplished.  We looked EVERYWHERE, we asked a bunch of people, and no luck.  It doesn’t help that Portuguese is not spoken at all there, and English is barely understood, even in the fancy casinos.

We started the day walking to the Macau Tower, one of the tallest in the world…

And enjoyed the view from up top.  After seeing the Hong Kong view, this was not as exciting, but still fun!

From there, we decided to walk to Senado Square, where there are still Portuguese looking buildings.  On the way, we passed by the “Gate of Understanding” built in 1993 showing friendship between the Chinese and the Portuguese.

Sadly, the place was abandoned, there was a gate blocking the entrance that had been there so long, the signed was rusted through and we couldn’t read why it was closed.  Grass was growing through the concrete walkaway and there were parts of it that have fallen through.  It was a big disappointment that something that is part of their history (good or bad) is so neglected. 

We kept walking along the water, it was super hot (and I came home with some weird looking burn lines), but it was sooo peaceful!  I would have loved to gone for a run around here.

The funniest thing?  These exercise machines were in a couple of different spots in the city.  There was an elliptical…

A Gazelle look-alike (and yep, AWKWARD picture)…

And my favorite one, that’s supposed to be good for the hips (yes, my hip still hurts after a run, I given up trying to find a solution for it.  Maybe I need one of these things I at home!). 

From there we stopped by the A-Ma Temple, the oldest in Macau, but it looked pretty new, and there was definitely a lot of new construction in it.  Definitely not impressive for something that was supposed to be hundreds of years old…  Is it wrong that I expected it to actually look old?

Then we continued to make our way to the Senado Square, passing a few old Portuguese buildings on the way.  (And no, Karl is not lactating in the picture below, he just doesn’t do well with the heat…)

Despite the lack of Portuguese food, it was nice seeing things written in Portuguese!

And finally, the Senado Square!  Sadly, it was very commercialized and some of the old buildings had huge modern “Body Shop” (and the like) signs.

The buildings on the square reminded me a lot of downtown Rio – same architecture.

And the sidewalks are very similar to the ones you find along the beach in Rio!

St. Paul’s Church ruins were next, and only a couple of blocks away…

The church was destroyed in a fire, and only the façade remains today.

The old fortress, was next on our list.  Macau is a HILLY city, and we were exhausted by then!

From there we did get a nice view from the Grand Lisboa top, the pineapple shaped building is totally-cool!

And a tree with its roots running down a wall?  Awesome!

After that, we cooled ourselves off in the casino!  We hit the slots machines and lost a total of HKD 60 (about 10 bucks).  The slots machines just aren’t as fun as the old ones with actual coins, and coins falling out.  Having it by credit, just takes the excitement away, so we didn’t stay long.

On our walk back to the ferry terminal, we stopped by for some pictures at the Lotus flower.

We got back to Hong Kong shortly before midnight, and both agreed that one full day was PLENTY to spend in Macau.

Then we planned how we would spend our last day in Hong Kong – we did have a full morning and most of the afternoon to explore!