Lotus, Incense and More Rain

It wasn’t raining in Macau the next morning, but the skies were depressingly gray. We gave up on the idea of going to the Macau tower to get an overview of the peninsula and the islands of Taipa and Coloane. Instead, we visited another high spot, the Guia fort, with its lighthouse, chapel and underground tunnels. Later, we went for a stroll in the scenic Lou Lim Ioc garden, with its lotus flowers, its collection of funny-shaped rocks, its several cats, and its winding bridge.

Then we took a taxi to the top of Penha hill, overlooking the man-made lake, the Macau Tower and the Taipa Bridge. From there, we walked downhill to A-Ma temple, a very old Chinese temple built around the 16th century. After observing the curious cone-shaped incense sticks and checking out its several stages (or floors), we came back down, just in time for some delicious, as-real-as-it-gets, Portuguese food, at the nearby restaurant “A Lorcha”.

We still had a couple more hours before we had to leave, so we went to the Monte fort, by St. Paul’s ruins. The Macau Museum, which is housed in the fort, is really interesting and very well organized, displaying both the different areas of the city and its unique culture. While we were there, it began to rain, and, by the time we got out it it had become worse. We couldn’t catch a taxi nearby, so we sort of “slid” downhill to the same bakery that had sheltered us from the rain the previous evening. My feet and legs were soaked and cold, but eventually we were able to get a cab, get to the hotel, grab our bags and go to the ferry that would take us to Hong Kong.