Normal morning routine, coffee, gym, out the door.  We don’t have to rush so much today because we only need to be sure to be at the Street art museum exhibit at noon, when we have our pre-purchased tickets.  Originally we were scheduled to sail at 4 or 6 or something, but they’ve changed the time to 8pm (we find out later it is so that we can all see the Symphony of Lights….again….), meaning we have all day to wander and do what we want.

We hit the ground and head up the street to the Kowloon Park, which is a lovely little piece of green in the middle of all the development.  There are some lovely ponds and fountains, nice walking paths and some cool iron sculpture work.  There is also an “aviary” type pond with birds – and this one bird we swear is not real, it sits so completely still on a branch in the water, but as we watch, it moves!  It is real.  Seriously – you’d never know unless you watched it closely, continuously!

Right at opening time, we visit the Hong Kong Heritage Discovery Centre, housed in two of the old barrack blocks of the British Army’s Whitfield barracks. Inside the Centre is a wealth of information on Hong Kong from ancient days to today.  There are different displays and historical information, great wood carvings found on pieces that were used as support between different beams, a cool floor made out of broken Ming pottery pieces – or replicated Ming pieces, they wouldn’t use actual pieces like that – and just tons of other interesting information.  Enough to keep us occupied for 30 minutes or so.

Now we are on a quest for lunch.  At first we thought about going to the “Temporary Cooked Food Hawker Bazaar” -yes, we swear that is the name of the place, it is even on the building – but then decide that it might be a little too much for us as everything, and we mean everything, was in Chinese. Plus, it was a crowded mess when we walked through earlier.  So we instead wander out around the city for a bit settling on this great Dim Sum restaurant with tons of choices; Hao Hao Dim Sum.  Here again, we order electronically, only this time from a QR code that launches a website ordering form.  Fortunately, there are also paper menus on the table, for those not so electronically connected, which lets us peruse the choices and make our decisions before working out the QR code ordering.  Choosing Steamed Barbecued pork buns, Spring rolls stuffed with shrimps and Fired Shrimp Wontons plus 2 beers (tactical error – they are the big bottles!), we sit back and await our food.  The tea service stuff comes out first – only this time there is no sweet waiter/waitress to make it for us – which suits us.  We just ignore it!  Then the food begins to arrive and we lose ourselves in some great authentic Chinese cuisine.  Everything is excellent – and fairly cheap – and when the really loud men behind us leave, a very lovely and enjoyable meal!

Now it is time for the museum, which proves to be harder to find than a map would have you believe. We make it to the waterfront and to a building that says it is the K11 Musea, which is where the exhibit is located, but it is actually a conglomeration of Lego experience and mall stretching along the harbor front on various levels.  A helpful information lady gives us directions – down this escalator, find the elevators, go to the 6^th floor, but finding the elevators is a challenge and when we finally do find a bank of them, they only go to floor 7.  Huh?  From there, we manage to find another bank of elevators (outside in a rooftop garden mind you) and descend one floor to arrive at the Street art exhibit.  Phew.   It must take years to learn your way around this city!

Tickets scanned, we enter into the exhibition hall which is not at all what we were expecting.  This is more a retrospective and explanation of how street art began, how it has developed and grown and spread across the world.  Which actually makes it an even better experience than we had thought!  And we were excited originally. 

The exhibits are set up into sections beginning with New York, then LA, San Fran and then the New Generation.  There are videos – one of particular interest documents the artist making a human body cast for a bust.  Way frightening to be the kid inside the cast, but way cool to see how it is done and then the finished product hanging on the wall.

There are artists who were brought to Hong Kong to do graffiti murals, all sorts of different styles and perspectives.  A huge skate board mosaic, made out of actual skateboards.  New Generation art with moving pieces of a face, looking like trains on a track, a life-size model spraying a wall, a cool block print and coffee stained piece.  Tons to look at and take in.

There is also a great photo collage of tagged NYC subway trains.  Along with an assortment of paintings that graffiti artists are now doing instead of graffiti. 

A couple of hands on interactive areas give us an opportunity to actually create some graffiti with markers and paper and there is a VR set where you can create graffiti on a virtual wall! While we don’t do the VR thing, we do watch someone else which is a lot of fun. 

Excellent, even if unexpected!

Now it is time to wander. Which actually entails just trying to find our way out of the mall where the museum was located!  We find another neat outdoor garden with odd statues, but a great view over the harbor, and then spend the rest of the afternoon in the maze of the mall.  Just kidding, but really, this place is more massive than we had originally thought!  6 huge floors and nothing that was even remotely intuitive in terms of ways to exit.  Once we managed to find the street we decide to walk around a bit, but honestly?  Not our cup of tea.  Everything is all ultra designer stores and stuff – with lines to get into the shops.  Seriously.  At Louis Vuitton there was a line about 100 people long just trying to get in! Crazy!  Longchamps had a line.  And somewhere else.  Nope. Not our style, so we just headed back to the ship, stopping at a WU Exchange place where we got a really good rate on our remaining Hong Kong dollars.  These exchange places here are totally competitive as opposed to a lot of countries we have visited. 

Traversing the mall, we’re back on board pretty early – early enough that I can run down to the laundry and actually get a machine.  Hurray!  Then we just did our norm, gym, dinner, watched the Symphony of Lights show again – same, same no different.  Just took more pictures.  But we did get a couple of much better videos of Tower 100.

Then came down to the cabin and watched the fishing boats at sea out in the distance. 

Later we watched the magician live streamed in the room – there is only one show each evening which is a bummer – we don’t remember that from previous sailings.  But the bonus is that they are live streaming every show, so you don’t need to go to the Cabaret lounge.  Works for us as we can hang out here and switch channels if we are bored. Or in my case fall asleep in the middle of the show and not be embarrassed!  Tomorrow, another exciting day at sea!