Tailor, Paramount, HK Park, Jardine

The saga with the airline continued this morning. We booked a one-way flight from HK to Shanghai online directly with China Eastern. But they had no way of specifying that Gabriel was travelling with us. We called from Canada without any luck (they either hang up or don't answer) and finally got through to someone here in HK. They acknowledged that their website couldn't be used to book infant passengers, and told us we had to come in person to their office to be able to add Gabriel as a passenger. Aargh. We made the trek to Admiralty MTR station, taking Exit C2 to Queensway Plaza, walked around to the United Centre, went up stairs to the elevator deck, then to the 31st floor. The ticket for Gabe cost $240HKD. But at least we were finally able to get this out of the way.

We headed over to Pacific Place to go get some custom shirts made. Our Lonely Planet guidebook recommended Pacific Custom Tailors so we paid them a visit. Celebrity photos in the store included several members of Air Supply, Jane Seymour, President Clinton, and "Pierce Brosanann". The fabrics were very good quality, the patterns decent, but not a huge selection in terms of colours. I ended up getting six shirts made for $2600HKD. I'm sure I could do better elsewhere, but I was here and the staff were great. One fitting to come back for in a few days, and then they'll be ready a few days later. The food hall in the basement, grEAT, was incredible: high-end chocolates, made-to-order lunch items, Serrano ham, Thai food... absolutely amazing. This is not your average North American food court.

Lunch was at the Paramount Banquet Hall near Causeway Bay. The food was alright, and the interior was over-the-top with chandeliers and purple accent lighting and beads, but the most, MOST awesome thing about this restaurant was the blinged out wedding golf cart they had right at the front entrance. With angel wings! I was so flabbergasted that I didn't even take a picture of it. This restaurant was the first dim sum place I've ever been to that had a large, assorted dim sum steamer: one big bamboo basket with five or six different items.

Heading back to Admiralty, we made our way to Hong Kong Park and strolled around the grounds. The aviary and ponds were quite nice, but the humid weather wasn't.

We finished up our day by going to my Mom's third cousin's place in Jardine's Lookout. It was a late night, and Gabe hasn't adjusted to the time change yet. We were all exhausted by the time we took the bus, MTR, etc. back to our hotel.