GK+HK: Happy Valentine's Day!

Not everyone in Hong Kong celebrates Valentine's Day on February 14th, but it is still quite popular (lots of restaurants advertising special V-Day meals, massive price hikes on flowers, etc), and we were only too happy to partake. Ours was more of an all-weekend celebration, though, so let's start on February 13th (ignoring the fact that it was Friday the 13th!).

Note: I've noticed an acute drop-off in the amount of food pictures I've been posting of late, so I'll try to compensate for that a bit today. ;>

We kicked off the weekend with an additional reason to celebrate: the approval of my Hong Kong visa renewal!

Inside "Immigration Tower", immediately after picking up the goods.

Outside Immigration Tower, showing my true feelings.

Normally visas are given one year at a time, but the kind people in the Immigration Department decided that I've been a good boy, so they gave me a two year visa that won't need renewing until 2011 (which, perhaps not coincidentally, is when I'll also need to renew my US passport).

After grabbing the visa, we went to our favorite theater and caught a showing of "Valkyrie", which I found to be quite enjoyable and noble in intent, but perhaps not a film easily seen more than once. Admittedly, though, it might not have been the best choice for Valentine's. ;>

After the movie, we ran up to SoHo and chose a restaurant that we'd often passed by on the mid-levels escalator, but never tried: Duke's Burger. It's a high-end, gourmet...well, burger joint that was absolutely delicious.

Duke's vegetarian portobello burger

Duke's "Classic" (with a glass of fresh lemonade)

Given that hamburgers aren't part of my normal diet, I wouldn't say that I'm a burger connoisseur, but these were easily the best I've had in Hong Kong. Also the most expensive, though, which is a reflection of Duke's location just as much as it is a reflection of their quality.

On Valentine's Day itself, Katherine and I took a long (just over a mile) stroll along Queen's Road West, ambling from the middle of Sai Ying Pun to the middle of Sheung Wan. When we arrived, we surveyed the scene and decided to try the Grande Stage restaurant inside the Western Market. As we rode the one-way escalator up into the restaurant, we began to see lots and lots of formal wear, making us feel fabulously underdressed (particularly me, in a bright orange VT t-shirt and jeans). Once we crested the top of the incline and stepped off, the reality hit us: we had just inadvertently become wedding crashers. (In our defense, there were no wedding announcements or signs indicating that the restaurent was reserved.) Since the escalator only went up, and we couldn't see any stairs down, there was no obviously graceful way to slip out. So, instead, we found the closest waiter, confirmed that we were treading where we shouldn't be, and asked how to leave. We had to sneak through the crowd to a side stairway exit on the other side of the room, but we did it, and perhaps gave the guests who noticed a fun little story.

Back to the dinner drawing board. About a block east of the Western Market, we found a nice-looking Vietnamese restaurant which very much did not have a wedding banquet inside. Perfect.