Buddha's Birthday

Buddha's birthday is a national holiday in Korea.  All Koreans have at least one day off, and there are celebrations all over the country.  At each of the temples they hang colored lanterns that are lit up at night.  There is a famous temple right in the middle of the city that is known for their beautiful lanterns.   I wanted to see the lanterns in the day light and all lit up at night, so one afternoon Russ, Lucy and I set out on this adventure.

At the entrance of the temple there were these huge figures that were made of different cutout metal layers all set on top of each other.

The lanterns in the front of the temple are hung in a specific pattern.  This picture is what it looks like if you are looking down from the top.

Here we are inside of the temple, looking up.

 There were thousands of lanterns.

The temple was also decorated with spring flowers.

We left the temple and went for dinner and waited it to get dark outside before we went back.

Can you see Lucy in this picture?  Look at the little girl in the pink shorts between Russ and I.  She was so excited to run out of the restaurant and across the street to get her picture taken.

After it was dark we went back, and while it was impressive during the day, it was beautiful at night.

They had lined the branches of trees with the lanterns.

Another fun adventure in Seoul.

Spring Break-Hong Kong

I am back to blogging.  I am sorry I was gone for so long.  The last couple of weeks of the school year were crazy busy, but now we are into summer vacation and things have settled down a little bit.  

The second part of our Spring Break trip was to Hong Kong.  We have some very good friends that live right on the China side of the China/Hong Kong boarder and they agreed to come over and meet us.  We spent a few days sight seeing as a family and a few days sightseeing with them.

As I said in my Beijing blog post, the girls were quite the attraction in China.  This man sat like this the entire 4 hour flight from Beijing to Hong Kong.  Even when I got my I-Pad out and took his picture he didn't turn around.

Thankfully the girls are good sports about it and just smiled and waved every once in a while.

It was raining when we arrived in Hong Kong, but the girls were very excited to ride in a double-decker bus.  

One of the many shipping ports we passed on the way to our apartment.  When we move with the military, they put all of our stuff in this type of shipping crate to send it to the next location.  We had fun discussing how many military families' stuff was in those crates.

 Our second day in Hong Kong we visited the famous Buddha on Lantau Island.  We took a glass bottomed cable car to the Buddha.

We passed the airport in the cable car.

The Buddha off in the distance

A great Father's Day gift idea for Russ.  He would look very handsome in an outfit like this.

We thought the "No Pets or Livestock Allowed" (in the cable car area) was a strange sign until we saw this...

Yep, that is cows randomly walking down the street.  No clue where they came from or where they were going.

One last fun picture with the Buddha.

We didn't stay long in this area because we could see a storm coming in and we were not excited to be riding a cable car in the middle of a storm.

The girls on the subway.  We always thought the subway system in Seoul was easy to navigate, clean and user friendly, but Hong Kong is even nicer than Seoul.  It was so simple to use the subway and anytime we stopped even for a moment to look at a map someone would offer to help us. 

We rode the subway into the middle of the city and walked all around downtown.

Big cities are always so alive and busy. 

The Bank Of China has a free observation deck on their 60th floor. 

A family selfie in the mirrored elevator.

She gets her kicks from her mother.  :)

The second day in Hong Kong we met up with our friends and took the tram to the top of Victoria's Peak.

She will be a great babysitter.

I read that  Hong Kong has the longest covered escalator system in the world. Of course we had to go check that out. 

There were even signs directing us to the escalators.

People use these escalators to commute to work.  In the morning they go down hill, but the rest of the day the escalators go uphill.  I am thankful that we rode them uphill and didn't have to walk up this hill.

We really like the family selfies. :)

 On our walk down from the escalator ride, we passed this old temple.  We aren't even sure what type of temple it was, but I read that these coils of incense could burn for weeks at a time.  It was very smoky in the temple and we could only stay in there for a few minutes before we all started to get headaches.

We love to take public transportation in foreign countries.  During our 4 days in Hong Kong we took the subway, bus, ferry, taxi and trolley.

We didn't exactly understand how the trolley system worked, so we just randomly picked a trolley and got on it for a ride.  I know, it sounds crazy, but we got to see some cool parts of the city.  The only momentary problem we had was when the trolley got to the end of it's route and everyone got off, we had no idea where we were at.  Thankfully, another trolley pulled up soon after that we got on and rode it back into the city.

 After our trolley adventure we walked along the waterfront. 

 Hong Kong has it's own version of the Avenue of the Stars.

 Since we don't know many Chinese movie stars we didn't know who most of the names were.  Except one...

I am a BIG fan!

Bruce Lee statue

Finally the ferry back to our apartment.  The girls really enjoyed the ferry rides.  It was so cheap to buy tickets we rode it numerous times.

The next day we met up with our friends again and headed out for the amusement park Ocean Park.

 It was very overcast this day, but the rain held off all morning.  It was great for us because the clouds kept everyone away, so we didn't have to wait in any lines all morning.

Taylor is fearless when it comes to rides.  Russ and her are on this ride...hanging upside down.  I am safely on the ground freaking out.

The park is divided into 2 different sections.  The front is mostly the animals and kids rides and the back has the bigger rides.  It is built on the side of a mountain and they have a cable car to take you from one side of the park to the other.

Unfortunately right around lunch time the skies opened up and the rains came.  It poured for about an hour then it cleared up again and we were able to ride a few more rides before we headed home.

On our final day in Hong Kong we said good bye to our friends in the morning then headed out to the coast to do a hike.

They are "friends for life" friends.  We don't see each other for years or talk for months but yet when we get back together it was like we were never apart. 

"This section of trail is very difficult and suitable only for experienced and well-equipped hikers."  Yep, that's us...experienced and well-equipped. 

This was a beautiful hike, but unfortunately it was VERY windy and very overcast again.  If we ever make it back to Hong Kong we will definitely visit this area again.

A perfect shirt for her. 

We ended our hike at this small beach.  The girls wanted to swim so badly, but it was too cold.  They still played in the sand for a while and put their feet in the water.

At the end of our hike we came to this small town that had a few "beach" restaurants and shops.  We ate in one and it was the best meal we had our entire time in Hong Kong.

That night we went back down to the water front and watched the laser light show.

Someone suggested we ride the trolleys at night because it is fun to see the city all lit up.  So again, we randomly picked a trolley and rode it through the city.  This time we got off before we got lost.

A fun picture to end my Hong Kong blog...roasted ducks hanging in a restaurant window. (heads and all)