Hong Kong Trip Day 2

We woke up quite early today, and we were out by 10am. We went to the nearby Tsui Wah 翠华restaurant recommended by many on the Internet. The was a short queue and the eatery was filled with people, but we were got our seats immediately as there were only two of us. The fried buns with condensed milk is the hot favourite there, and the fish cakes and fishballs with noodles was really yummy too. I could taste the freshness of the fishballs, unlike the ones I always tried in SG. I will say this is one of the 'must-try' restaurants, especially if you like eating at traditional HK cafes, there are countless of their outlets in Hong Kong so there should be no problem finding one.

The plan for today is the visit Macau, so we made our way to the HK China ferry terminal near our guesthouse. Along the way, we saw the traditional ice cream mobile.

Although I wasn't hungry, the softee was said to be thick and creamy, so we stopped to try, it cost 9HKD each.

We reached the ferry terminal around 12.45pm and went to the counter to look for tickets to go to Macau. The ticket sold at the counter was for the ferry ride at 2pm, which was quite a long wait. We decided to buy ferry tickets from the peddlers at the side instead, since they were holding on to the 1.30pm tickets, and it cost us $350 HKD. When we buy the tickets, we did not take note of the ferry terminal we will arrived at, and only found out that Cotai jet will take us to Macau Taipa ferry terminal. It's different from the previous terminal I went to, but it was still okay since the major hotel shuttle buses will still be there to pick up passengers. 

We looked for the Grand Lisboa/Lisboa hotel shuttle bus from the ferry terminal, since it will bring us relatively close to the St Paul Church, the landmark of Macau. We did not have wifi at Macau to help us navigate the streets, but after alighting from the shuttle bus, we decided to follow the simplest rule to bring us to the most popular tourist site>> follow the direction where most people are heading. On a hot Sunday afternoon, there were a lot of tourists at Macau, most of them from the mainland. As we walked along, we spotted the famous Margaret Cafe e Nata with lots of people eating their egg tarts outside the small shop. 

The Portuguese egg tarts were really good.. Smooth, hot and creamy. Completely up to our expectations! The cold yuan yang (coffee+tea) was quite bitter, so we didn't finish it. 

The narrow streets leading to St Paul thereafter was super crowded on a Sunday afternoon, it actually made me dizzy. 

Most people were there to buy the 姖记手信 but we weren't interested in those foodstuff. Instead, we escaped to a small cafe to avoid the heat and crowd. I didn't see any Loccitane cafes before, and I'm really glad to find one in Macau as there wasn't many cafes on that crowded street (mostly small shops with no aircon). 

The foodstuff and drinks were quite not outstanding, but it was a bliss to escape from the heat and the crowd. The first floor of the cafe was the normal shopfront selling all the skincare products, and the 2nd and 3rd floor was a cafe. It was also the first Loccitane Cafe I had came across, probably we cant find one in Singapore. 

After we finished the drinks and got refreshed, we went to the nearer Metropole Hotel to wait for a shuttle bus back to the ferry terminal. I would say its really a good way to attract tourists to the major hotels and of course casinos to earn revenue for the small island. Macau has the highest amount of earnings from casinos, even more than Las Vegas! Although Metropole is a much small hotel and the shuttle bus service is shared with some other hotels, the staff were really nice and directed us to sit down near the reception to wait for the bus. They even helped us to flag the bus and bidded us goodbye politely although we were not guests of the hotel. I also observed that most of those people who alighted did not go into the hotel, I guess they were just heading down to the nearby Senado Square.