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Hong Kong Week-Seeing Big Buddha and Tai O

It’s hard to grasp the immensity of Big Buddha until you’re high in the sky on a cable car looking down at this massive sculpture perched atop the hillside on Lantau Island. The sitting Buddha is one of the largest in the world at 112-feet high. It’s definitely worth checking out, not only to walk up the many steps that lead to the Buddha and see the neighboring Po Lin Monastery, but to take the wonderful cable car ride to the site. Once again, our concierge at the W steered us in the right direction by getting tickets to the cable car in advance and going for the standard car, not the deluxe one with a glass bottom. The line for the standard cable car was much shorter and frankly the vistas from the windows are magical enough. Take the subway to the Tung Chung station and you’ll see signs to walk over to the Npong Ping Cable Car. Wait in line with your timed ticket (try to arrive at least 20 minutes prior to your time) and then get ready for a 25-minute ride past the international airport to the mountainous silhouette that houses Big Buddha. Once you disembark, walk past the shops and climb the 268 steps to go face-to-face with the statue, which made its debut in 1993. Then wander over to the large monastery, where people were lighting incense and saying prayers for good fortune at the start of the Chinese New Year. 

 
From Big Buddha, you can take a 15-minute bus ride to the historic seaside village of Tai O and then take a short boat ride to supposedly see pink dolphins and the many historic houses built on stilts on the riverside. We didn’t see any pink dolphins on our boat ride, but I did like being on the boat looking at the landscape. Afterwards, we strolled the narrow streets and tried the homemade fish shu mai. Tasty. Realize that from Tai O, it’s a good hour-long bus ride back to Tung Chung station. So if you’re in a rush, you might want to skip Tai O and take the round-trip cable car back. 
  

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The January Newsletter Now Available at ActiveTravels.com

Looking for travel ideas in 2013, then check out our January newsletter. In this month’s issue, we discuss the long list of outdoor adventures found on the Big Island of Hawaii, recommend three eco-resorts in the Caribbean, divulge our favorite ground operator in Italy, and suggest a quick winter getaway in New England at the Mount Washington Hotel. As always, we’re here to talk about winter, spring, or summer travel. So if anything comes to mind, email me at steve@activetravels.com. 
 
Enjoy the three-day weekend. I’ll be back on Tuesday with my favorite National Parks to visit during the winter. In the meantime, get outdoors this weekend and be active. 
 
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Climb Mount Shasta, California

When a five-year-old sketches a perfect triangular cone of a mountain, they come pretty damn close to drawing Mount Shasta. Standing 14,162 feet tall, this snow-clad Northern Californian beauty (a 4-hour drive from Sacramento) can be seen from a 100-mile radius.  To reach its prominent summit, however, is no easy task.  Even in the summer months, you’ll need crampons and an ice ax.  These can be rented locally or you can opt to go with Shasta Mountain Guides who will teach you how to best trudge in snow as they accompany you on the trail. The 6.1-mile, 6,000 vertical feet climb starts at a stone building the Sierra Club calls Horse Camp. You might wish you were on a horse as the South face trail rises sharply past the frozen shores of 10,000-foot high Lake Helen to the icy slopes of the 13,000-foot high Red Banks. This is where your ice ax comes in handy since Red Banks has a good 35-degree grade. Reach the summit and you’ll be treated with views of 10,457-foot Lassen Peak, the Three Sisters in Oregon and the other volcanic peaks that make up the Cascade chain. Give yourself 13 hours for the uphill climb and a mere 1-2 hours for the descent, where you simply slide down on your ass.  The French have a lyrical name for this exhilarating downhill journey, glissade.  
 
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San Antonio Week—The Emerging Pearl Neighborhood

Even before the Pearl Brewery shut its doors in 2000, this section of San Antonio, a 20-minute walk from downtown, was a dead zone in the city. Then Kit Goldsbury, owner of Silver Ventures, came along and bought the whole tamale in 2001 with a vision in mind. He wanted to transform the entire brewery into a working neighborhood with a focus on local culture, food, and education. He personally sought out clientele for his 22-acre mixed-use property. In 2005, the Culinary Institute of America arrived to do a lecture series and five years later, opened its third campus. With an emphasis on Latin American cuisine, CIA San Antonio has 75 students currently enrolled and will open its first student-run restaurant, NAO, in May. They’ll join three of the city’s favorite restaurants. Sandbar and Il Sogno Osteria, with James Beard-nominated chef Andrew Weissman at the helm, and the upscale Mexican fare found at Johnny Hernandez’s La Gloria. Shops include the Twig bookstore, one of the few independent bookstores in the city, and the Mexican-accented dishes, glassware, textiles, and cooking wares found at Melissa Guerra. Saturday mornings, the place is hopping as the farmer’s market comes to the neighborhood.
 
This is only the start. When I went there yesterday, there was so much construction going on, I thought I was in Beijing. Avenue A will be home to a row of 300 new residences, already being bought by young professionals and boomers moving back to the city. Just behind the condos, in the original 19th-century brewhouse, a 140-room boutique hotel will emerge in 2014. Across from NAO is another CIA restaurant, the Boiler House, housed in the former red-brick boiler room of the brewery, and come November, a farm-to-table restaurant and wine bar. Nearby is a cocktail bar set to open within the month called The Bluebox Bar. And two brothers are planning to open a barbecue and beer joint called Granary in August in the former 19th-century home of the brewery’s chief coppersmith. Easily accessible from downtown via the extended Museum Reach of the River Walk, this area of San Antonio is on the verge of making Kit Goldsbury’s vision come to life. 
 
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Charlie Hebdo Cartoonists Also Remembered for Wine Labels

The three Charlie Hebdo cartoonists killed in Paris were not only known for their biting satire. According to Robert Camuto in his latest blog for Wine Spectator, those same cartoonists were also beloved in France for their imaginative wine labels. “Their spirit was to laugh at everything and expose the biggest bullshit in the world. And they were killed by the biggest act of bullshit,” Bordeaux winemaker Gérard Descrambe tells Camuto in the column. As we celbrate Martin Luther King this weekend, let’s all buy a bottle of Bordeaux and raise a toast to civility and tolerance. Then go out and watch Selma. I’ll be back on Tuesday. 

 
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Top 25 Bike Sharing Programs

I’ve been a big fan of Hubway, Boston’s bike-sharing program since it started in 2011. I also love the opportunity to jump on a bike in other cities, especially after taking a bike tour with a local. So I was pleased to see Biking Expert’s list of top 25 bike sharing programs, where Boston ranks 4th, the top city in America. Surprised to see Moscow so high at number three. Not surprised to see Montreal on the list since they implemented one of the first bike sharing programs in a city. 

 
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Holiday Cheer in Toronto—The City’s Architectural Boom

Over the past five years, Toronto has enjoyed an architectural renaissance, with Daniel Libeskind’s bold addition to the block-long stone and brick Royal Ontario Museum, Frank Gehry’s tasteful redesign of the Art Gallery of Ontario, and hometown favorite, Jack Diamond’s acoustically perfect opera house, the Four Seasons Centre. Outside the ROM, shards of aluminum and ribbons of glass jut out onto the sidewalk with knife-like precision, without care or need for right angles. Libeskind’s whimsy lends itself well to the child-like intrigue that one can’t help but muster when visiting the mind-boggling collection of wares inside the ROM. More than a mere natural history museum with requisite brontosaurus skeleton, the ROM has a vast collection of gems and treasures from ancient Egypt, Greece, and China. On display until January 6, 2013, is the exhibition “Ultimate Dinosaurs: Giants from Gondwana.” The show displays bizarre dinosaurs, virtually unknown to North Americans, before they were discovered in South American and Africa. 
 
Highlights of Frank Gehry’s new addition at the Art Gallery of Ontario include a stairwell that extends outside the blue titanium back wall to reward guests with vistas over Grange Park. And Galleria Italia on the second floor, a large lounge where ribs of soft Douglas fir curve upward, as if you’ve just entered the inverted hull of a ship. A spacious gallery devoted to the sculptures of Henry Moore and landscapes by the Group of Seven, highly regarded Canadian painters from the 1920s, are a small sampling of the impressive works found at the AGO. But I’ll be headed there this morning to view the latest blockbuster exhibition, “Frida & Diego: Passion, Politics, and Painting.” This rare showcase of 155 works by and about the artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera was created primarily from the collection of Mexico’s Museo Dolores Olmeda. It’s only on view through January 20, 2013, so find a way to get to Toronto soon. 
 
 
 

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