Wednesday, March 18, 2009—Macau

Wednesday, March 18, 2009—Macau

Once again, our day started a bit earlier than usual. We had to meet Lucy at 9:15a to catch the ferry from Hong Kong to Macau. We got up and re-packed so that we could leave the bulk of our luggage at the hotel in Hong Kong since we only needed an overnight bag for Macau.

We got checked out and had a light breakfast before taking the bus to the ferry terminal in Kowloon. Lucy met us there and we checked in for the ferry after clearing immigration. Even though Macau is part of China, as is Hong Kong, they are both considered Special Administrative Regions (SARs) and require visitors to essentially leave each area to enter another one. It is a bit of a hassle, but goes pretty smoothly and quickly.

The ferry ride to Macau was uneventful and pretty smooth. It takes about 1.5 hours for the trip and goes through the South China Sea. You can see a few pictures of us on the ferry here:

Upon arrival in Macau around 11:30a, we cleared immigration and caught the shuttle to the hotel. Our hotel, the Grand Emporer, was quite nice and certainly lives up to the standards for the gambling capitol of the world (Macau overtook Las Vegas in 2008 to claim the title, based on total gambling revenue).

Once we were checked in, we headed out to the central part of Macau to have some lunch and do some sightseeing. Macau has a heavy Portuguese influence, dating back to the16th century. It shows in the architecture, the food, and the language (both Portuguese and Cantonese are official languages). We sampled a number of foods and visited a number of the tourist sites, some of which you can see here:

We also had lunch at a Chinese restaurant, a little hole in the wall. We had a very grumpy older man for a waiter who chose to mostly ignore us, so Lucy ended up being our waitress and fixing our tea, washing our dishes, and generally taking care of things, LOL! Here's a picture of Lucy in her new job as well as a picture of our rather pitiful lunch:

We wandered around until about 3 p.m. at which time we went back to the hotel to take a nap before heading out to dinner.

For dinner, we took the public bus to Taipa, another island that is part of Macau. Lucy, who has been here before, wanted us to visit a Portuguese restaurant that she recommended. We actually opted not to go to that restaurant but rather to patronize another restaurant called Cortada. We were not disappointed—the food was excellent and I would highly recommend it to anyone. We had some cod fried rice that was incredibly flavorful and also a braised lamb shank that tasted wonderful. All of this cost the equivalent of about $10 US! You can see some pictures here:

After our Portugese dinner, we headed to a Chinese restaurant for the second course, consisting of shark fin soup and fried shark fin balls. Both were quite tasty, although Joe, the noodle critic, pronounced the noodles as being a bit chewy, LOL!

At this point, we were ready for dessert, so we headed to a Portuguese bakery and had sedura, a very light dessert. We then wandered around a bit before taking the bus back to the casinos.

We decided to visit several casinos and try our luck. We started at the Grand Lisboa—the tallest casino in Macau. The building was quite nice and the casino was fairly busy. Joe and Lucy both did a bit of gambling at the slots while I wandered around. Then we headed to the Wynn casino, stopping to watch the water show on the way. You can see some pictures here:

Finally, around 12:30a, we headed back to our hotel and visited the casino there. Our luck was a bit better and we played until about 2 a.m. Then it was time to call it a day!

Tomorrow: Macau and return to HK.