Monday, November 20
LinksHome November 5
This morning we all slept kind of late, so we didn’t get much of a start. The girls actually like this, and would be quite happy to be lazy and stay in their jammies all morning.
Danny had offered to let me go into town to do some shopping without the girls, and I thought that over for about a nanosecond before saying YES!! Originally he had planned to take Emily and Stephanie down to the park by our hotel, but I suggested that he give his aunts and his mom a call and see if they wanted a visit. Luckily for Danny, his mom took him up on his very generous offer, so he took both girls on the bus and subway, and went to his number eight aunt’s apartment (where his mom, other aunt and uncle are all staying). The aunties and uncles and grandma spoiled Emily and Stephanie rotten, giving them the run of the apartment, and even cooking them some really delicious noodles for lunch. The girls had fun colouring and playing and since Danny’s aunt has her own small grandchildren, she wasn’t fussed that they were terrorizing her lovely apartment.
After they ate some lunch, Danny and his cousin took the girls down to the playground at his aunt’s apartment block. There they were free to run around, play on the monkey bars, get dirty and sweaty and generally have a great time. You can see from the photos that Emily and Stephanie are happiest when outdoors getting dirty.
Danny said that uncle German was really surprised to see how capable Emily is on the monkey bars and she was very happy to show off. I’m told that by the time they were ready to leave, uncle German was tired and Emily was still doing her Energizer Bunny impersonation.
Meanwhile, I had walked down into the city with every intention of doing some heavy duty shopping. Got a couple of cute things for Emily (that was NOT the plan) then when I went into Marks and Spencer to buy some things for myself, I realized I didn’t have my credit card! Not only did I not have it, it was safely ensconced in the hotel safe, for which Danny had the only key, so I couldn’t even go back to the hotel and get it.
I resigned myself to deciding on a couple of nice shirts that I wanted to buy and to buying myself a treat as a late lunch. DoFuFa is hard to explain, but it really is my favourite food, and there is a street vendor who sells a big tub of it for just $6 HKD. I bought a tub of that, and some lovely cut fruit, and came back up on the escalator. I also called Danny and asked that he come home quickly because I was missing him and my darling daughters (and that darned key, of course!).
We all headed back out for a little shopping late in the afternoon, but I never did make it back to M&S. The girls weren’t in the right frame of mind. We did go to Hong Kong Optical and chose some cool new glasses. We’ll get them on Wednesday night, so we’ll have to take some photos for you. By the time we finished in there, Emily and Stephanie were ratty and we resigned ourselves to a quick dinner.
We chose to go back to the Mongolian style restaurant again. The food was good again, but the service wasn’t very great. Either we are gluttons for punishment or that restaurant happens to be closest to the shopping we enjoy most.
We called it a night and returned to the hotel
