Ocean Park {Giant Pandas in Hong Kong}

Already December and I need to start packing for our next trip... making me realize how far behind I am on posting about China (October)...

Before we left I asked my children what was on the top of their to-do list for Hong Kong.  My nine-year-old daughter wanted to see a giant panda.  So we set aside a day and made our way to Ocean Park in Aberdeen.

Here they are:

And some more pictures from Ocean Park:

 entrance to the Giant Panda Adventure section of the park

my son listening to panda sounds

 where the pandas are today

beautiful goldfish room

cable cars across the park

(At one point during this ride (which seemed like about eight hours) these go incredibly high. Admittedly, I don't like heights, but I was okay on the ferris wheel and fine on similar cable cars near Huangguoshu waterfall in China... but these nearly caused a nervous breakdown... ridiculously, unnecessarily high.  Didn't bother anyone else in the family.)

lunch -- I know, not very Chinese - but we had so many interesting dishes which I'll show in the Guizhou posts -- and felt like something a little familiar

our view at lunch

jellyfish room - classical music was playing as the colored lights changed - absolutely beautiful

more jellyfish

view from the ferris wheel

roller coaster

another great view

at the Pacific Pier exhibit where my children fed the seals

The South Pole Spectacular

this is one of my favorite rides - there is one at Tivoli in Copenhagen too - the little cars go up and down and around at such a high speed you feel like you're going to fly out of your seat... I think we rode it four times

view from one of those cable cars... my husband took this picture because I had my head down, crying, but I managed to hand him the camera

My son's top to-do (ride on a junk) and my older daughter's (shopping) up next.

xoxo