Hong Kong is a city designed for pedestrians. And shoppers. The two things that I'll remember most about Hong Kong are the everpresent pedestrian bridges and the endless malls, often connected into a sprawling network, so that it is practically possible to walk accross the entire city without spending a minute on a sidewalk. In fact, we quickly learned to take the stairs up into the walkways whenever they appeared, as the mere existance of a staircase often signals the impending end of the sidewalk. Hong Kong also boasts a robust public transit system, (although we didn't venture to take anything that didn't run on a track).

In our last day and a half in Hong Kong, we explored Kowloon, enjoyed the New Years festivities around the city, and fought the crowds to take the tram up to The Peak. In between all the sightseeing, we managed to squeeze in some more dim sum, a nameless noodle joint, and some local fast food.

In Kowloon we visited the Wong Tai Sin Temple, full of long coils of insense, after a dim sum breakfast at Tao Heung. The downside of traveling with two people is the limited number of dim sum dishes you can order! Seen here are beef shortribs, shu mei, shrimp wrapped in fried bean curd, and glutinous rice with chicken, all of which were delicious, but best were the rich, runny egg custard buns and the chewy rice dumpling wrappers, not shown.

This little noodle place, on Wellington, under the escalator, had a form to fill out for your meal, which checkboxes for soup, sauces, noodles, and toppings. We chose fried bean curd puffs, cabbage and brisket with rice noodles in broth, and enjoyed the resulting gingery soup at the counter, slowly adding different hot sauces and flavorings from the trays set out there.

We stopped at this little fast food joint in Hong Kong's City Hall because the dim sum place located there was closed, but I was surprised by how good my congee with preserved egg was. Everything else was about what you'd expect from fast food, however.