Hong Kong By Foot: Exploring Central

Hello and welcome if you are new to my travelogue or welcome back if you have been following the updates.

This trip to Hong Kong is a DIY tour and we couldn’t cover all the places we had crammed into our list. So a very practical Day 1 in Hong Kong went as follows:

9:30 am – Arrival at the Hong Kong Intl Airport

12:30 pm – Reached the Guang Dong Hotel and lunch

2:30 pm – Check-in at hotel

3:30 pm – Tsim Sha Tsui Promenade

4:00 pm – On the Star Ferry to Central Pier

5:30 pm – St John’s Cathedral

6:00 pm – Hollywood Road

7:30 pm – On the Star Ferry back to Tsim Sha Tsui

8:00 pm – Symphony of Lights show

8:30 pm – Dinner @Din Tai Fung, Silvercord Mall

Tsim Sha Tsui Promenade

A 10 min walk from the hotel and we are at the promenade. The sky is overcast, but thankfully no rain. The view of Central, the central business district of Hong Kong is spectacular !! If you are hoping to see the Avenue of Stars and the Bruce Lee statue here, you will be disappointed, because, it is closed and being renovated.

The Hong Kong Space Museum is nearby, it’s the dome-shaped building in the picture below, not sure whether it was open, but we didn’t venture inside. There is also the famous Clock Tower here.

On the Star Ferry to Central Pier

Along the promenade, we walk to the Kowloon Pier to take the iconic Star Ferry to Central in Hong Kong Island. There is a ferry every few minutes. There was a machine dispensing tokens for the ferry ride, we fed a HK$ 10 note and out popped perfect change and the two tokens; HK$ 2.7 for adults, for the upper deck.

Right next to the Central Pier is the Hong Kong Maritime Museum, the entrance fee is HK$ 30 per person; it was going to close by 5:30 pm, it was already 4:30 pm, so we skipped the museum and proceeded along the skybridge from the pier. We saw the Hong Kong Observation Wheel along the way.

Next stop was the St John’s Cathedral and along the way, we crossed the IFC Mall.

St John’s Cathedral

It was a 30 min walk from the pier to the cathedral. Passed by some of the towering skyscrapers along the way.

The cathedral was built in 1849 and is the oldest surviving Western Christian Ecclesiastical Building in Hong Kong. It was in good condition and the plaque explained that the external walls were resurfaced with a plaster of lime, cement and gravel in 1934.

The Hong Kong Park is nearby, but by now, we were tired and it had started to rain.

Hollywood Road

The Hollywood Road was a disappointment, it began to rain heavily and most of the shops were closed. The place is famed for the antique and curios shops. It had become dark, so no hopes of seeing anything. It was an area displaying colourful art works and art galleries, but sadly we couldn’t see anything. As per history, Hollywood Road was one of the earliest roads to be built when the colony of Hong Kong was founded. We also missed the famous Man Mo Temple here.

We took a taxi back to the Central Pier to catch the Star Ferry back to Tsim Sha Tsui, to see the Symphony of Lights show. We were hungry and grabbed some snacks from the 7Eleven store at the pier and boarded the ferry.

More from the Tsim Sha Tsui side in the next post…

Hope you enjoyed the travelogue and if you wish to see more photos, please visit the site www.milesandsmiles.net.in

Happy travelling,

Anju