Hong Kong Trip -- Flower, Bird, & Goldfish Markets

On Tuesday we went to visit the flower, bird, and goldfish markets since they're all relatively close to each other.  I mostly took pictures of flowers that were fairly unfamiliar to me as an American.

You can never go wrong with a huge variety of hydrangea!

I haven't seen a heather plant in so many years that when I finally found one I got really excited!  I called Ben over to look and when he did he joked, "That's not heather, it's Erica."  Since that was such a typical Ben joke I rolled my eyes. But then he pointed to the sign:

We had a good laugh about it.  But as it turns out, there are 2 types of Heather.  One is called Calluna and it grows in the Summer and Fall.  The other is called Erica and grows in the Winter and Spring.  So there you go.  Thank you, Hong Kong, for teaching me these things.

This little guy who is hanging upside down was my favorite of the day.  He stayed that way the whole time I was watching him.

I couldn't take many pictures in the goldfish market because a lot of owners hand strict no-camera policies.  As you can imagine, there were a lot of goldfish, koi, and turtles.  We knew these tiny turtles would melt our turtle-loving Ella's heart.

Obviously, Chinese food in the US is very different from Chinese food in China.  For the most part, I think I'll stick with the American version.  :)  But one thing I didn't expect were the Chinese bakeries.  They were easily one of the highlights of the trip.  They are all over the place and sell a variety of buns and cakes.  That day for lunch we went to a bakery and shared a variety of treats.  It was fun carb-loading.  As Mum so smartly put it, "It's a good thing your moms don't know that you're eating so many treats for lunch."  Yes, indeed, especially Ben's mum.  ;)  We had sponge cake and cheese cake (which is halfway between and American cake and cheesecake).  Let it be known that the Chinese don't put much sugar in their treats and so it really wasn't that bad for us...  But make no mistake, if they start selling coconut buns here, I'm going to double my weight.