Hong Kong - Day 10: History Museum, High Tea, Foot Massages and Happy Valley

We started out the day at the Hong Kong Museum of History. I'm so glad my husband doesn't like museums as much as I do! All the museums are free in Hong Kong on Wednesdays, so we figured we could just go and not feel bad leaving quickly! :) Many of the books and internet sites we've looked at had this at the top of their lists of things to do in Hong Kong. I guess when you're not a museum person, you don't understand why! We did the museum in 30 - 45 minutes which was PLENTY of time, if you ask me (some say you could spend at least 4 hours there!)! This boat was cool - it showed how they had fishing nets off the side.

After the museum, we went to a foot reflexology place to get foot and calf massages. We'd read a bunch of people say how they loved them, so we had to try them. They were awesome! She started in right on my arch, which was a little painful, but once she started rubbing the rest of my feet, I pretty much fell asleep and the arch on my other foot didn't hurt so bad. It was sort of like getting a pedicure without getting your toe nails clipped and painted and getting the nice foot and leg rub for much longer! If there is time on Friday, we may have to go back once more! :)

We then went to The Peninsula Hotel for High Tea. I guess this is still around from when the British owned Hong Kong and has turned into a real tourist attraction. We ate the finger sandwiches (which were SO good!) off the middle plate before I remembered to take a picture. The tea was good, as were most of the treats (does anyone really need fruit cake?), but I don't really get the point of High Tea!

We took the Star Ferry back across the harbor (the white and green boat). They run every 5 minutes and are a cool way to get a mini-harbor tour while also getting to where you need to be.

We then finished the day at the Happy Valley racecourse to see the horse races. I swore after taking dad to the race's for father's day once I'd never go to another horse race. But, this was another item that was on everyone's top things to do in Hong Kong, so we had to go see what the excitement was about! We never did figure out what it was about....for how easy it has been to get around and figure things out here, this was the complete opposite. We couldn't figure out where we were allowed to sit, we couldn't figure out what horses were racing, we couldn't figure out how to bet.....and no one was that helpful. You'd think they'd gladly show us how they could take our money! We finally found some brochures on what we needed to do. We got all set to bet on the 3rd race (we missed the 1st one and couldn't figure anything out for the 2nd one). Chris went up to put our bet in and we just missed it! And, the horse Chris picked to win, won! We ended up betting on the next 3 races - we spent $280 HKD and won $79.80 HKD (that's a net loss of about $50 USD including cost of admission). The other strange thing was that there was 30 minutes between each race - this is FOREVER! 4 races was all we could handle, so we left. We have decided it should be called Crappy Valley! We were happy going in and we were in a valley....

Additions to Day 9 (thanks to Chris):
1. We were way better jumping on the bungee trampoline thing than the people in my video.
2. We ate McDonald's for lunch and Chris was beside himself because he got a double cheeseburger because they didn't have any single cheeseburgers and it would have taken 5 minutes to get one! I think this made the trip to Ocean Park completely worthwhile! :)