Rain, rain go away...

Well, it was another rainy day here in this paradise of Hong Kong.  Instead of embracing the rain like we did yesterday, Jeremy and I decided to escape into the downtown of Hong Kong.  Our shuttle dropped us off in front of one of the largest malls in Hong Kong called, Harbour City.  We were astonished to discover upon entering the front doors that this mall was comprised of hundreds of the world's most prestigious brand name stores.  

      The above picture only touches the hundreds of high end stores we discovered.  While it was fun to walk through the stores, the prices deterred us from purchasing any purses, clothing or accessories.    Thirsty from our walking we went in search of somewhere to get a coffee.  Thankfully we came across a Starbucks-a little piece of home in Hong Kong :).

After our stroll through the mall, we further escaped the rain by finding a movie theatre and watching Batman: The Dark Knight Rises.  We were very pleased to discover that the movie was in English and after a few minutes of viewing completely forgot that there were also "Chinese" subtitles on the bottom of the screen (an excellent movie, by the way, and I recommend it to everyone reading!). 

Our day concluded with a tour of the Hong Kong harbour.  This was a tour we had previously arranged with our hotel.  First stop on the tour was at the downtown market. This very much reminded us of being in Mexico, strolling the markets and being hackled by stall owners.  With it STILL raining, our first purchase was an umbrella for Jeremy.  Walking further into the market we came across a stall selling Toms shoes.  I was curious and stopped into the stall just to see if they were even real Toms.  They were, and the store owner would not let us leave without a purchase.  We negotiated her down from her original price of  $40 CND to $20 CND!!!  From the market, we boarded a small version of a cruise ship for our tour of the harbour.  Upon boarding (with about 250 other passengers) we were encouraged to grab some appetizers and find a table.  After setting sail in the harbour, we were ushered to the top deck to view the "spectacular light show".  To our disappointment, the "light show" turned out to be a few spot lights and literally, the lights from the buildings-not quite what we were anticipating.  We decided to head back under the deck and have dinner.  We were served an international buffet, complete with fondue!  After a relaxing ship ride, and MTR treck ride home we hit the pillows around 11:30 PM, already anticipating what adventures tomorrow will bring :)