We went to Macau for a day trip on Friday. There is a ferry from HK that only takes an hour. For those that don't know, Macau, like Hong Kong, is a Special Administrative Region of China - i.e., a former European city-state colony, now part of China, that is still self governing. Macau's claim to fame is gambling. It has five of the ten biggest casinos in the world (including the two biggest), and the largest gambling revenues (it surpassed Vegas a few years ago).
Despite that, we didn't gamble. We went into the Sands casino for about ten minutes to check it out, but weren't too impressed. Servers were bringing around free drinks. I grabbed one that looked like beer, but was actually a thick syrupy energy drink. Gross.
The non-casino areas of the city are very cool. Most of the streets are narrow and busy, and there are tons of alleys. Many of the buildings look European.
Ruins of St. Paul's Cathedral. Where's waldo? See if you can spot me in this pic.
We ate dinner at "a little hole in the wall" that Janet's sister recommended to us, which turned out to be a famous Portuguese restaurant. The Portuguese guys that ran the place spoke better Cantonese than English (according to Janet - I wouldn't know).
I'd like to go back to Macau on another day trip when we're back in HK in December. On the agenda will be seeing the biggest casino in the world (the Venetian) and eating some local alley food.
Dear Ones,
ReplyDeleteAri, I found you! (Left, halfway up the stairs).
Your Macau photos are beautiful.
So many casinos, so little time :) Actually, the whole gambling thing baffles me. It seems to me that it's a way to divest oneself of (lots of) money while receiving no products or services in exchange. Jim and I went to the Harrah Casino in New Orleans last week to see a rhythm & blues performance. The performance was FABULOUS. The casino was pretty cool, too, in terms of gaudy, lavish decorating.
Love, Mom