Hong Kong Day 45 2/11/2014

We arrived in Guangzhou central station just after 8am and headed off to find the metro to Guangzhou East station for our connection to Hong Kong.  The metro at the station was closed so we followed the crowds and ended up at the public toilets!  With the help of the tourist information we found the metro and had an easy journey over to the East station with time to spare for breakfast at Starbucks.  The waiting area for the 'fast' train to HK was much more civilised that previous experiences.  The train is none stop to HK and therefore despite being c100 miles from the boundary we passed through Chinese immigration before boarding.  We were hoping to spot the actual boundary and see cars going from driving on the right to the left but unfortunately didn't.  The landscape in the New Territories is very mountainous and green.  The train was supposed to be a fast train but was probably the slowest we've been on so far and arrived late into HK station.  After finding an ATM to get some HK dollars we got the metro over to HK island and had a short walk to our hotel, the Cosmopolitan which is just across the road from Happy Valley, HK's legendary race course.  The hotel is a typical western hotel.  Our room was quite small and after showers Simon decided to complain and we were moved to a bigger room.   We went out in search of food and ended up at The Pawn, a trendy recently refurbished bar which although didn't serve food did serve rather refreshing beer!  We headed back to our hotel to meet Gayble, a friend we'd met on our Peru trip last year and lived in HK.  Gayble was actually over the road from us at her sports club so we headed across to meet up there.  After a quick tour of the club (big, old colonial style) we settled down on the outside terrace amongst the skyscrapers and the race course and tucked into dinner.  Gayble's partner Marcel also joined us and he and Simon had an added treat of watching Man U v Man City!  It was a great evening and something we assume most non residents don't get the opportunity to do.