Baccarat and Egg Tarts

We landed in Macau on a cloudy afternoon. In general, we’ve been pretty lucky with the weather during our Asia travels, but this time a level 8 typhoon was scheduled to hit Hong Kong that same night, and it didn’t take long for the rain to start. However, we had less than two days to see Macau and, since there were no taxis available, because it was raining, we took the bus downtown to Senado Square. This square is the heart of colonial Macau. Its winding sidewalk, made of black and white cobblestones, leads you to the Portuguese institutional buildings such as the Senado itself (the mayor’s office) and the Santa Casa da Misericórdia (Portugal’s solidarity institution.) We had some homemade noodles at a quaint, traditional Chinese restaurant, and made our way to the baroque church of St. Dominic, which houses a very interesting museum of antique religious objects.

On our way to the ruins of St. Paul’s, we stopped for a “Portuguese egg tart”. Now, I’m a big fan of the real thing and was disappointed by the pudding-like consistency and overall eggy-ness of these tarts. Still, I imagine they can be very popular with foreigners who have never tried the original, but I suggest you look somewhere else -- I found a decent egg tart in downtown Kyoto, Japan, of all places. One thing you must absolutely not miss while in Macau is the ruins of St. Paul’s. This magnificent Jesuit church was built in the 17th century and destroyed by a fire about 200 years later. All that remains is the beautifully ornate façade, which is perched on a hill, at the top of a long flight of steps. We had time for some pictures before it started pouring really, really hard. We waited for about 30 minutes under a bakery’s awning and then gave up. Armed with only a flimsy umbrella, we started to descend the cobblestone-paved streets, looking for some decent Portuguese food.

By the time dinner was over it had stopped raining, so we decided to sample the casino entertainment. The casinos are Macau’s biggest tourism draw right now, since a lot of Chinese from the mainland come to the territory strictly to gamble large sums on baccarat. The Wynn is one of the most recent Las Vegas-style casinos in Macau, and only a 10-minute walk away from our hotel. We made our way there and saw a lot of Chinese people playing mostly baccarat and some dice. There were only a couple of roulettes, as well as blackjack tables and slot-machines (not very popular), and a type of poker that I didn’t recognize. The casino was actually a very elegant place -- as opposed to some cheesier, older ones. We gambled a little (and lost) and went to sleep.