Part 16 (Lets get this day finished!)
I had in mind I wanted to go over to Stanley for a quick look rather than straight back to town and figured there would be cool breezes by the sea. I had looked up buses and maps and knew what we needed to catch but the problem was all that construction work around Ocean Park. The only buses pulling in to the park itself was the expresses straight back to Admiralty and Central. I needed the regular bus plaza and strangely no-one I asked could seem to tell me how to reach it – not the bus dispatcher, not the security guards, not the gate staff. They pointed us in one direction and we’d do a loop as all exits were blocked by construction walls and end up back where we started. We would have given up except for stubborn me was now determined I would work this out so I watched and when I saw some people heading off crossing right through the midst of some of the construction we followed.
Eureka! Following unmarked paths weaving through the construction we found the bus plaza but I could see the road we needed to take curved away at a different level below and to our right. Buses from the plaza would take us back to the Aberdeen tunnel. I headed off cross country, being forced onto circuitous paths that led me ultimately to my destination, a bus stop on the correct coastal road – and to my chagrin on the opposite side was the path alongside Ocean Park I had been trying to reach at the start knowing the bus stop was directly opposite. People were walking down it so it must have been open if only I had known how to get there. Anyway DH was muttering about me getting us hopelessly lost and did I really know what I was doing, as we waited for about 15 mins for a bus with no-one else there, when the bus number I wanted came along – of course!
It was another double decker and we followed a circuitous route into Stanley (I knew DD with her motion seediness would not enjoy this part but hoped it would be short). Deepwater and Repulse Bays looked very inviting as we went past.
We got off at Stanley Plaza rather than staying on to the markets and walked down to the waterfront. I looked longingly at a waffle and icecream shop but knew my stomach would protest about the dairy this soon since I am partly lactose intolerant at the best of times. DD and DH just wanted cold drinks.
At the plaza
Lovers's hearts here
Stanley is named after Lord Stanley, the British colonial secretary for the colonies in C19th. It was the site of the last stand of British troops in the battle of Hong Kong in 1941 before surrendering to the Japanese. Just outside of town is St Stephens College that was used as a military hospital during the war before it fell to the Japanese then it became an internment camp. Rather soberingly the college is infamous for a massacre when soldiers stormed the building and killed many British and Canadian soldiers lying wounded in their beds on Christmas Eve 1941.
Today Stanley was very quiet.
The first thing we noticed was that Murray House has been renovated into shops and restaurants with a H&M rather incongruously occupying the ground floor though the top floor restaurants look nice places to eat with views over the water. Murray House was built in 1848 as officer’s quarters and stood where the Bank of China Tower now is in central. It was dismantled in 1982 and as it was heritage listed the pieces were numbered and stored for several years before being rebuilt here. Over time the numbers had faded or were lost so when it was rebuilt they had several bits left over.
View of Murray House from the plaza
We walked out along the pier and enjoyed sitting quietly enjoying the late afternoon breeze. The top structure of the pier came from a Central pier originally, having subsequently topped an open air theatre in a park for a while before being rebuilt here. The ironwork is gorgeous.
View of Stanley waterfront and market stalls from Blake Pier
Looking back at the esplanade
This pooch is keen to buy a new outfit
