Terry had very little time to look for an apartment in Hong Kong last fall. He'd found two places online that looked like good possibilities. He made a trip over here from Shenzhen, looked at one, and decided it was good enough. It's turned out to be more than good enough: we like our apartment, we like our neighborhood, and we like this particular location on Hong Kong Island.
If you were to take a taxi to come visit us you'd most likely approach from this direction. Our building is on the right side of the street, the second one from the corner. It looks bright and clean next to the moldy-looking one on the corner. Our apartment is toward the top of the building. We much prefer living in a walk-up to living in one of the towering apartment buildings around us. One of the best features of our apartment is the shotgun layout. We have a view of the harbor out this side of the building and a view of the street on the other side. When we open the windows on both sides we can get good cross-ventilation. On the left side of the street is Belcher Bay Park.
There's a very pleasant sitting area on top of our building. Yesterday was beautiful, so I went up there with a book for awhile in the late afternoon when the buildings all around us provided ample shade. This is the view looking north/northeast toward Kowloon and New Territories, both part of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. 20 miles further north is the city of Shenzhen in mainland China.
The green area on the right is Belcher Bay Park. You can just barely see the yellow cranes on the wharf that's just beyond the park. Kowloon is on the other side of bustling Victoria Harbor.
Still looking out from the rooftop, this is the street that runs outside the front of our apartment building, quieter than usual because it's Sunday afternoon. The tram runs on either side of the double white line. Here you can see a black one headed east toward Sheung Wan, Central, Wan Chai and Causeway Bay, all along the northern side of Hong Kong Island.
On the left is--you guessed it--Belcher Bay Park again.
This is the east side of Belcher Bay Park, the side that's farthest from our apartment building. When I walked through the park on Sunday morning around 8, there were scads of people out taking a stroll or doing tai chi.
The exercise class that I go to meets every day except Sunday near the small pavilion in the center back of the photo.
After I left the park on Sunday morning, I crossed the street going toward the harbor, walked along the wharf where I took the photos one evening last week for a blog entry, and then walked out to the end of the jetty. Here's the view from the jetty looking back at our neighborhood. The trees of Belcher Bay Park are visible in the middle of the photo between the water and the thicket of apartment buildings. Mount Davis is in the background on the right side.
I went walking with Terry out here on Sunday night just after sunset, when there was a wonderful breeze and lots of lit-up skyline both on our Hong Kong Island side and on the Kowloon side. It felt as if we were a long way from Minneapolis.
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