Hong Kong (March 29 & 30) - On The Land

The marine terminal in Kowloon (across Victoria Harbor from Hong Kong) is part of a huge, mostly very upscale mall complex that is part of the local equivalent of Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, including prices.


In one store window was an incredible (real?) ivory carving.





Turning down one of the side streets, the character of the shops changed markedly.














Built on steep hills and ever mindful of limited space, streets in Hong Kong are often steep and narrow.


Some spiral. As landfill projects steadily make the harbor smaller, streets that once ran long the edge of the harbor are well inland. One of our fellow passengers, a retired USN Captain who brought his ship into Victoria Harbor just twenty years, expressed shocked at how much it has shrunk.

Steep hills are a challenge for pedestrians as well as cars. In the Soho District this problem is mitigated by the longest escalator in the world.





It is not one continuous escalator, but rather a series similar to people-movers in airports.





I need to research it's total length and rise, but it certainly is long and accomplished an ascent that would be exhausting by stairs. And sometimes stairs is the only option because there sonly one escalator. It goes up at times of day when the majority of the foot traffic is going that direction and down at other times. If you need to go up when it is going down, start walking.


To get to the top of Victoria Peak, the steep ride on the cable car...


...is the tourist attraction although we had better views from the bus we took one way.

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