Eat. Travel. Eat!

After a few days everyone felt better and as a result we all went to cafe TOO for breakfast. This breakfast was quite special; there were items that we had never seen at cafe TOO in the past-- baked cha siu /barbequed pork buns, chicken egg drop soup, and some "cat ears." Maybe cafe TOO featured these items since it was Christmas Eve, but either way we enjoyed this meal quite a lot. All of the items as usual were a delight to eat; the baked barbequed pork bun was definitely freshly made if not a bit on the sweet side, and the chicken and corn egg drop soup had minced corn in addition to the minced chicken. Along with a cup of green tea, this breakfast was a great start to a finally more eventful day on the trip. It took long enough! cafe TOO at Island Shangri-La Pacific Place Supreme Court Road Central, Hong Kong Tel: (852) 2820 8571 After breakfast I tried a new lens-- the Nikon AF-S Nikkor 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR . I did not take it out onto the streets as ...

A lesson for all: when traveling, try to stay healthy and not get sick. Becoming sick takes plenty of time away from your vacation! What seemed like a picturesque morning in Hong Kong on the third day of this trip did not turn out so well for me. Picking up the food, everything tasted great but then, sickness started to appear and the day ended completely in the hotel room. Contemplating what might have caused it was confusing, as there were not many obvious suspects of where this sickness could have come from. But later, it became more obvious that the room's air temperature gauge was quite off, typically still staying hot although we had set it to a low temperature. So promptly the day after, we requested a room change which was done without complaints! The next day, my condition went up for the better. Still, just to play safe, I took only light choices from the buffet. Plain congee with lettuce and some pieces of bread with honey isn't exactly a buffet seeker would...

Sleeping early the previous night, it happened to be that everyone rose up early-- meaning before six in the morning! So after waiting for a while (since according to cafe TOO hours that the buffet didn't open until 6:30 A.M.) we went downstairs to an empty cafe TOO. We found out downstairs that we actually could have had the buffet open to us before 6:30A.M. At such time frame there were not many guests eating inside cafe TOO other than business travelers. The food was barely touched, but the chefs were already busy preparing more food for the morning rush. What was really great visiting early was that the food really was fresh-- the steamed dumplings had been barely touched and everything was very hot and fresh tasting. On this plate: fried rice, fruit (dragon fruit, watermelon, honeydew, papaya, pineapple), four dumplings (pork, juicy pork dumpling, clear vegetarian, and siu mai), grilled items (tomato, zucchini, and chicken), and some stir fried rice cake. This plate...

After settling in to our rooms from the long plane flight, breakfast was next in the list of things to do. So, we all headed down to cafe TOO, where the employees greeted us and walked us to our table, asking us our room numbers, number of guests, and if we wanted newspapers along the way. Walking around cafe TOO again for the first time in more than two years, I felt very impressed by the food display. It had seemed like a 14 hour flight had brought me into such a different environment- immediately the stress from the past few weeks before this trip seemed like it had disappeared. I was also surprised by the amount of people in cafe TOO- lots of people happened to be staying in the Island Shangri-La compared to before for this vacation period. Families were having large get-togethers and reunions here and everyone seemed to be in a very happy mood. Of course along with the families were plenty of business travelers- lots of variety in terms of people in the restaurant. As I at...

  Four months later I am now almost complete with all the background information for Island Shangri-La on this trip! That was long, was it not? This is the last section of interior pictures on Island Shangri-La other than Cafe Too, and after this I'll be rolling in the much more interesting posts on food, attractions and more from the trip up to a certain point. This post is all about the interior sections not included in the earlier public spaces post- pictures on the content that Shangri-La has from the 39th floor and up. I don't have Restaurant Petrus or the Horizon Club lounges included in any of these pictures but other than that you'll have a broad understanding of the actual floors with hotel rooms in them! The picture above is of the hallway to the rooms. The rooms followed the elliptical shape of the building and for most of the 16 levels were located throughout the entire floor. However, some floors included other rooms in addition to regular guest rooms, li...

After such a busy week, it is always pleasant to sit down, relax, and look at the world around you. This week certainly has been one of them- universities have started to place out their results to eager senior students, Redondo Beach has a sardine clean-up to deal with, and Japan devastatingly has had a 8.9 magnitude earthquake. Here's hoping that Japan will recover quickly so that they can resume their daily lives again. With times like these, it would be great to grab a breather and just enjoy the world and what you have and simply reflect. This set of photos are a reflection of my Hong Kong trip in December. Three months later and with barely any progress on this series at all, I might be somewhat disappointed with my status on this series, but times are busy, and many people I can sympathize with right now. Relax and enjoy the pictures- I have enjoyed editing these pictures especially and I will let them speak more for themselves while I will provide you with some background...