Art of tea, a park, fisheye

A tip from eGullet Forums led me to a leisurely meal of dim sum at Metropol Restaurant in the United Centre in Admiralty. The dining area is massive (the table numbers go up to 400) so I didn't have to share a table and was able to do lots of people watching. Decent variety of food, and they have stations in the centre where a bunch of women cook up plates to order: congee, various savoury and sweet cakes, stuffed peppers and eggplant, etc. The trolleys come by often and the waitresses were very pleasant. Definitely give this one a try.

Afterwards, I made my way to the Flagstaff House Museum of Tea Ware, a stately building with a nice collection of teapots and good writeups about the history of tea in China. There's some amusing poetry reflecting on the nature of drinking tea that's worth a read.

At Hong Kong Park, they had an exhibition of lotus flowers, which didn't impress me all that much. I walked through the enclosed aviary which was quite impressive, as you stand on wooden walkways high above the ground. The dense palms and other foliage provided cover from a sudden rainstorm. Showers here are strange: they begin without warning, dump a good deal of rain on you, then the sun comes out again, all within ten minutes.

Next stop was the ifc mall, a huge sparkling retail space with all the big names in European fashion. Only the super rich can afford to shop here: the stores were mostly empty. The mall is definitely a nice place to relax, with big open spaces, a rooftop terrace, lots of interesting restaurants and coffee shops. In the Oval Atrium, a jazz trio was playing crowd favourites (mostly Sinatra and jazz standards).

I ate at Miso, a Japanese restaurant in Harbour City, run by the same company that runs Thai Basil. The food was just average but I did get to watch one of the chefs painstakingly scale, fillet, skin, slice and arrange a small sashimi platter.

Fresh guava and mango juices are everywhere. Sweet.

If you get a chance, I would recommend trying to watch a movie at the Hong Kong Space Museum. They have an OMNIMAX screen which left me with my mouth open the whole time. The distortion of scenes projected near the top of the dome makes for some interesting effects. I watched "Mysteries of the Nile", a short documentary about a team that sailed the entire length of the world's longest river. It was nice to be able to lie down on a chair after a day spent walking through Hong Kong.