Nan Lian Garden

Today we were planning to go to Victoria Peak, one of the most famous tourist attractions in Hong Kong.  You know all those beautiful Hong Kong postcards?  Yeah, a lot of those pictures are taken from the peak.  I won't go into too much detail about that, though, because we ended up going somewhere else.  You see, today the weather was so muggy and cloudy that you could hardly see the little islands out in the harbor.  In face, you could hardly see a building just down the road from where you were standing.

Don't worry, though, we didn't just stay home!  Diana and David heard about this awesome place called Nan Lian Garden.  You just take the MTR to Kowloon Tong and then to Diamond Hill.  Here are the two masterminds on the MTR.

From Diamond Hill, you just walk across the street, and you come to this nondescript little gate that reads "Nan Lian Garden" on the left-hand side.

There is a map of the place, but it's a good bit smaller than it looks here.  While Hong Kong itself is a sprawling city, everything inside is kept rather compact--even it's nature parks.

Here, you can see how the trail winds under the overpasses.

Once you're in a little ways more, you come to the inner gate.

And there is the official sign at the front of the gardens.

Just for fun, take a guess at what this building inside of the park is?

That's right, it's a Chinese Timber Architecture Gallery!  Of course, that was my first guess...  What exactly was that doing in the middle of a park?  Still, it was a very interesting place to look at.

After that, we wandered around the gardens a bit more, as you can see in the following pictures.

If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times, but I think it's pictures like this one that really capture the essence of Hong Kong.  Don't look at the tacky tourist in the Hendrix shirt.  No, take note of the golden pagoda and the Buddhist pines.  Then look at all the skyscrapers in the background.  I think it's this juxtaposition that defines the entire character of Hong Kong:  both old meets new and east meets west.

By the way, these are Buddhist pines.

Look closely and you'll see the steam rising from the ground.  Of course, it's actually just a little simple engineering, but it's also the reason this spot is called "Dragon Hill."

This fountain marks the entrance to the Lotus Terrace, which is the silver-colored deck in the background.

Here's some proof that I'm not the only tacky tourist.  Check out Chris, Justin, Travis, Charlie, and Nicole.  They were taking pictures of the Golden Pagoda, just for the record.

You know, like this...

After ogling the pagoda for way too long, we climbed to the top of the Lotus Terrace, and came to the real heart of Nan Lian Garden:  the temple.

Eventually, we all came back to campus, and I grabbed dinner at one of the restaurants at the University MTR station.  The restaurant is called MX, and the food here is really good--not to mention pretty cheap (but what isn't cheap in Hong Kong?).  Anyway, this is nothing special, just "Salted Baked Chicken with Rice and Vegetables," but they do something to it to make it really tasty.  I suspect MSG.