minimunchkin: "Ear" Is Here!

Tania visited us three weeks ago. Ryan was extremely excited to see "Yee Chai" (although from the way he pronounces the word, it sounds more like ear rather than Aunty), impatiently counting down the number of sleeps until she arrived. Since Tania had already done most of the touristy things on her previous visits, we just took it easy this time and did things at a lesisurely pace.

Of course a day at Big Wave Bay was compulsory. We went out on a Friday to avoid the crowd and it was definitely the right decision. We pretty much had the whole beach to ourselves, and we'd chosen a day with perfect (or as close to perfect as we could have asked for in summer) beach weather. With the sun hiding behind the passing clouds and a strong breeze to cool us down, we started the day off with a hearty brunch at the beachside cafe followed by a cool dip in the sea and then a lazy day lying on the beach. Lovely!

Separated by one generation, the two babies of the family

It took two adults to hold an 8 month old still...

...and still, most of it ended up on her face!

We ended the day with a walk along Stanley Promenade and dinner at one of the restaurants facing the sea.

Stanley Promenade

Knocked out mid-dinner after a long day's play

Brunch at our favourite cafe, a walk around at a shopping centre to escape from the afternoon heat, a swim and some sand play at a beach. This is a rather typical weekend for us, well, normally not all in one day but this time we did. We took Tania to Cru in Soho, they do a good brunch there, although she might not think so since they gave her a spinach brie omelette instead of the spinach blue cheese omelette that she ordered! We girls (including my baby girl) then did a spot of shopping at Tai Koo Shing while the boys spent their time at the toy store and amusement centre. Ryan excitedly took the 30+ tokens he'd collected to the counter to exchange for some toys, but to his dismay, he didn't have enough to get even the smallest toy. A plain hot dog alone costs 80 tokens! Shad then spent the next 20 mins explaining to Ryan how these places use this "trick" to cheat you into spending more money to get more tokens. For the rest of the day Ryan kept grumbling "they are not nice, they just cheat your money, they are not nice!"

After recharging our batteries with a Hong Kong style afternoon tea (borsch soup with soft butter buns, stir fried black pepper beef hor fun and iced milk tea), we took Tania to another one of our favourite beach, South Bay. When we got there, the sun was out but half an hour later the sky opened up and it started bucketing down. Luckily I had just taken Mia back to the car before the downpour started, but Shad, Tania and Ryan got absolutely drenched. Anwyay, Ryan had a grand time running around and playing in the rain on the beach.

Stationary baby (our Missy wasn't a big fan of the sand)

Minutes before the downpour

Lunch at Cafe Too, Shangrila Hotel is a must do when visiting Hong Kong. I think they have one of the best buffets in town.

Start of lunch...

Half way through...

Two hours later, Ms Han was still stuffing her face with suckling pig skin!

It's always nice to have free imported babysitters to help out with the kids :)

But aiyo, reading newspapers while babysitting? It's just so hard to find good help these days. Har har!

One of the nice things about living in Hong Kong is that there is never a shortage of new restaurants opening up. Tania treated us to a lovely Sunday lunch at the recently opened gastropub, The Pawn in Wan Chai. Housed in one of the few remaining heritage buildings in Hong Kong, this restaurant is named after what it used to be in the old days, a chinese pawn shop. Lunch was lovely, fish and chips for the little munchkin, truffle butter wild mushrooms on toast, scallops, quail and a four course summer truffle spread for us adults. Yummy! We were so stuffed that we could only manage one dessert among the four of us.