Christmas in Hong Kong

I can't believe Christmas has come and gone and we are already in to a brand new year. It's a bit late but better late than never to share how we spent our holidays. As you can imagine, Christmas was a little different for us this year. We made the decision a few months ago to not go home for the holidays and take advantage of our time in Asia to explore the surrounding countries before we head back to the state in a few months.

We decided for Christmas that we wanted to wake up somewhere different and exciting to take our minds off of being away from our families. There were so many different places on our wish list but we narrowed it down to the quickest, and easiest for a short 4 day trip, so off to Hong Kong we went.

Since I did the planning for our trip to Thailand I let Garrett handle the planning for this trip. He knew it was a big deal for me to be away from home for Christmas so he had a few surprises up his sleeve. We both agreed that we didn't want to do too much so that we would still be able to enjoy some of our normal Christmas traditions- watching Christmas movies on Christmas Eve, FaceTime with our families, and streaming a Christmas sermon from church. We wanted to explore but also have time to relax and enjoy having some time away together.

To start- our hotel was AMAZING. We had a beautiful view of the entire skyline of Kowloon. The skies were a bit foggy most of the days we were there but the temperature was pretty great. The first full day was Christmas Eve. We saw the sun break through the clouds so we decided to take the tram up to the tallest peak of the island and overlook the entire city. Such a cool skyline on both sides of the bay.

That afternoon we took the subway to the other side of the bay to go up to the top of Sky 100. Sky 100 is the tallest building in the city, ranked #5 tallest in the world. The 100th floor has a 360 degree view of the city. As you can see there is a lot of smog in the air so we were lucky to have gotten such clear views.

As I mentioned earlier I knew there would be some hidden surprises from Garrett in the things we had planned. Surprise #1 - An etched wine bottle to document our Christmas in China. We aren't big on souvenirs but this was one that suited us well.

While enjoying the view from the top of the city, Garrett decided to give me Surprise #2 - tickets to Disney Land Hong Kong! I had been begging for us to go but Garrett told me there was no point since I couldn't ride any of the rides (#pregnancyprobs). I guess my kid-hearted, Disney lovin' self convinced him so he planned for us to go anyway... of course I wanted to go right then but we saved it for our last day.

That night we joined thousands of others along the bay to view the city lights. Every night at 8pm both sides of the island put on a light show synced with music. Several of the buildings were fully decorated with Christmas themed lights. Hong Kong has one of the coolest skylines and it was really neat to see all of the lights sync up.

Dogs are members of the family too so you should never leave them out of a prime photo op! 

Christmas Day we decided to take a bit of a break to rest our feet from the 14 miles we walked the day before. We spent most of the morning on FaceTime wishing all of our families a Merry Christmas. God bless technology!

When your wife wants a picture of Santa you pose for her so she doesn't look like a crazy person :) In case you can't see him, he's in the left hand corner.

For lunch we ventured out to find the #1 "to do" on our list- Tim Ho Wan. We were told it would be hard to find and that there would definitely be a wait. It was pretty easy to find but the wait was no joke. We spotted the crowd around it from 10 stores away. The overall experience was pretty unique. They give you an order card and a number- which is basically your number in line. While you wait you fill out the card marking the items you want. When they get close to your number they take your order and when a table is ready you sit and your food is right out. When we got there they were only on number 198, and as you can see we were 268. An hour and 10 minutes later and we sat among a crowd of people to enjoy the BEST dim sum we have had. Before we went we read some trip advisor reviews and ordered based off of the most popular items reviewed- we were not disappointed at all.

Everything we ordered was DELICIOUS!

We made it an easy day and headed back to the hotel for some traditional Christmas movies and a romantic candlelit dinner enjoyed with a side of Christmas jazz tunes. And no better way to end the night than enjoying the beautiful view from our Bayfront view room. It might have just been Garrett and I but he makes my heart full enough for a room of a 100 people. Next year's Christmas will be quite different with a house full of people, and a little Speed to take care of so it was nice to enjoy the time just the two of us- even if I did have a few meltdowns and brat moments :)

On our last day it was FINALLY time to be kids again and go to Disney Land!!!!

Obviously it was much smaller than what you might be used to at Disney World in Orlando but it was equally as magical. And the best part was- no wait times! We were able to get all of the big rides done before lunch and enjoy all of the shows the second half of the day once it started getting crowded. It was awesome. Of course I couldn't ride everything with Garrett but he had a blast and I was able to get some good action shots of him enjoying himself. It was so much fun! 

Pregnancy Approved Roller Coaster = Boring 

When you're a solo rider you get to skip the line

All in all we had a great trip and think the amount of time we were there was pretty perfect for what all we wanted to do. There wasn't anything we did that I wouldn't recommend.

Stay tuned for a wrap of the incredible year we've had, polished off with one last trip to ring in the New Year.