For the past week I have been on staycation while one of the Best Women has been in town. I’m further perfecting my tour guide skills and have even added a few new destinations to me repertoire.

Highlights of the staycation have been:

• FILO at the Excelsior Brunch – the food, the view and the company were all fantastic. A number of low clouds drifted over the city obscuring the view from time to time which looked pretty impressive and when we couldn’t see the view, we could focus on the food;
• Finally having lunch at the Po Lin Monastery which is where the largest seated bronze Budda in the world is located. This could barely be seen on that particular day as it was also covered in cloud and a slight rain (we had bought rain ponchos to wear just like everyone else who wasn’t prepared for the weather). Looked a little eerie. Mr Shallot and I introduced our jet lagged guest to the Poking Game. A quick poke is given whenever said person looks as though they are going to fall asleep. This Game should only be played with someone with jetlag to help keep them awake and adjust to the new time zone. Fun for the whole family (except for the person with jet lag);
• Riding on the longest outdoor covered escalator in the world from bottom to top. This is a reversible escalator that in the mornings, runs downhill so all the people living on the Mid-Levels can get to work and after 10am, it runs uphill so we can get to the various lunch venues and also so these people can get home. The escalators are 800 metres long and it is more of a system of escalators with landings at regular intervals so you can get off and go down the side alleys or to other streets. There are many bars and restaurants along the way and a pub crawl down all of them would take at least a week. We met one of my colleauges half way up the escalator and arranged to meet her after her gym workout. She introduced us to another Chinese restaurant which was also pretty good;
• High tea at The Peninsula – that was a tough day;
• Shopping at the markets and in particular, the Jade Market as I had never been there before;
• Met another cousin who dropped by for a visit on his way back to South Africa from Japan. He mentioned that it seemed like we were a transit interchange as aside from the Best Woman, we also had another visitor (Mr Ben10) from London. That evening Mr Shallot made a chicken risotto which was meant to be a pumpkin and goats’ cheese risotto but I remembered all the ingredients when I was shopping, except for the pumpkin;
• Ending the trip at Red overlooking Victoria Harbour with cosmopolitans.

I spent Friday recovering as everyone was back to work or their respective countries and read Slumdog Millionaire. I’m expecting to be a bit under whelmed by the movie now based on the reviews I’ve read and the changes that seem to have been made to the characters and some elements of the story itself.

As with the end to my previous holidays, I have yet to find my path to early retirement but I am actively working on it. Maybe next holiday I’ll have the answer…

On another note,
Happy ‘significant’ birthday to this Best Woman’s Mum! Hope you had a great one and are planning your visit too – I’m expecting both of you next time and we can all high tea together!

*Thanks to The Pretenders for the title to this post.