Picture of the Day: Victoria Peak

How can you ever get tired of this stunning view of Hong Kong?

We had a visitor from out of town so after dim sum today we did the touristy thing and went up to Victoria Peak via taxi.

The Peak Galleria shopping mall is being renovated, and there are still large numbers of people coming up, so the only place to go to the washroom is the Peak Tower nearby and the lines were ridiculously long...

With the Peak Galleria not completed until next summer, there are no provisions in place for visitors to have enough facilities to help them have a decent time up there. It's practically embarrassing. Does the Hong Kong Tourism Board know this?

The Peak Galleria will be reopened next summer...

In addition, my architect cousin was critiquing the area and was unimpressed by the existing buildings. He feels there is a better way to showcase this iconic landmark than just plonking a mall on the land; there should be terraces for people to have better views looking down on the city, and transportation links could be more thought out instead of underneath a mall in a dark place.

The Peak Tower isn't exactly an architectural statement, and it looks like the Peak Galleria will be pretty much the same except it'll have more expensive stores and restaurants in there to pay off the renovations. Hardly inspirational.

But we digress... once our bathroom issues were sorted, we did the circular route around the Peak on Lugard Road. It was an absolutely gorgeous day today, with blue skies and some clouds, and not too hot either.

At first there were hordes of people doing a charity walk, but as we went along the route, the numbers slowly dropped off and we had unobstructed views of the city we couldn't help but take pictures of.

When we finished the 3.5km walk less than an hour later, we had to get out of the Peak because there was hardly anywhere to have a drink, let alone sit down with so many people there.

We went to the underground transportation area where there was a big line for the minibus and taxi, but the #15 bus was about to leave so we took that to go down. There was no choice but to stand on the bus the whole way, but thankfully the ride was relatively fast!