Cafe Coral & The Avenue of the Stars Hongkong

Traveling to Hongkong actually is easy if you know your way around, if you are certainly good with directions and if you have a best friend who practically visits Hongkong every 2 months to shop. When we landed in Hongkong a few hours after our Manila idle-time, Warren did a ninja and was quick to guide us to the train terminal after getting our luggage. Yes, the airport has its own airport express railway that runs like clockwork! We paid HKD$55 or PHP330 for the one way fare to get to Kowloon for 20 minutes. The train is faster but if you want a little sight seeing you can always get on the bus yet takes more than 20mins and usually leaves every 30 minutes.

Because the bus rides and hotel shuttle services are free, we hopped on the next Peninsula bus we saw after the train dropped us off. The free shuttle service is only for those passengers who were on the Airport Express Train. There are staff from Hongkong stations and hotels that will guide which shuttle you should be on to get to your hotel. Why Peninsula when the hotel we booked was Kowloon? Because Peninsula Hotel Hongkong was just across Kowloon! How convenient, right,  especially when Kowloon doesn’t have their own shuttle services.

This is how the ticket looks like.

Iggy is buying an Octopus card. It is like a preloaded card worth HKD$150 for the first card and succeeding is HKD$50-100.

of course, you insert it here

Yey, walkalators in Hongkong!

My first photo of a Chinese baby. The woman can’t understand my English

I was so excited to go around the city enough to not check out the hotel anymore and have Warren and the rest of the men bring our bags upstairs. Kowloon Hotel is right smacked in the center of Tsim Sha Tsui.

I love this part of the city that makes the idea of you being in a foreign country so exciting! Everything is novel! People come from the subway and you’d think it is dirty down there but no – they have walkalators on their subways! There was a Cafe de Coral on the third floor of a SASA building in Nathan Road and I had peking duck there for dinner.

Swarthed in fat glaze arrgh. So delish!

Café de Coral is the largest Chinese fast food brand in Hong Kong. It was established in 1968 and operates more than 100 self-service fast food restaurants in the territory. With over 34 years of proven experience in the food service and catering industry, Café de Coral currently caters to an average of over 300,000 customers a day, making the chain the undisputed market leader in the field.

Warren was ordering and I was taking his photo and this lady from counter went up to said and said, “NO PICTURES!”

Now SASA and Bonjour is something else. Like how Watsons or Mercury Drug is strategically placed all over Philippines, Sasa and Bonjour is situated almost every 3 blocks in Nathan Road. Sasa and Bonjour is like the candy store for beauty product addicts like me! Besides selling really low-priced and authentic perfumes, they house high end beauty and health products from Shu Uemura, Shisheido, Lancome, Clarins and many more!

We hurried dinner to catch up on the Avenue of Stars – the one place that gives a breathtaking view of Victoria Harbour. I remember going through a lot of subways and these mini escalators! Hahah talk about being lazy.

Under the tunnel of Salisbury Road and a series of subways to head to the Avenue of the Stars
 

Shortest escalator! Talk about LAZYYY.

at the subway (photo by Warren Go)

This is what greeted us when we got out the subway.. oooh, aahhh!

The Peninsula Hotel at Salisbury Road, Kowloon

at Avenue of the Stars

My favorite shot

Warren gave us 20 minutes to go look for Bruce Lee. I never did find him. It was freezing cold when we got to the Avenue of the Stars – think 20 degrees plus more winds! The shops were pretty much closed, too, so right after we took photos we dashed back inside the building. We had to go home early because we were scheduled to go to Disneyland the next morning. Most photos by the way are here and here. :)

to be continued… 

Share and Enjoy