Welcome to our new apartment!

Its been a little while since the last blog post because we have been very busy settling into our new apartment. We had to go a few days without internet when we first moved in which as you can imagine was quite frightening.

We ended up in a community called Discovery Bay. This is on Lantau Island, located across the water from the main Hong Kong Island where most people work. Basically its like being in one of the outer boroughs of New York. Hong Kong Island is Manhattan. We take a ferry ride for 25 minutes to reach the center of the city, so its actually not a bad commute at all.

The apartment itself is about the same size as our last place in New York, just with a different layout. However, the ammenities are much much better. We have a gorgeous pool in the backyard free for all residents & a limo service to drive us to the town center where the ferry and buses are stationed (about 1.5 miles away). With the palm trees and almost year long warm weather, it feels like we've retired to Florida. We are also located very close to Hong Kong Disney and you can see the fireworks at night from the pool.

The town center has a Residents club with gym, pool, library, rock wall, and even a small bowling alley. There is also a beach! And lots of little shops and delicious restaurants. Sigh.. I love it. And there isnt a Starbucks here yet just a local coffee shop which is actually pretty refreshing.

And now for the pictures! First up, our apartment (our furniture has not arrived yet so its pretty empty).The bedroom...

Living room..

And kitchen. We also have a bathroom of course, but who wants to see pics of that!

Some interesting observations about apartments in Hong Kong:

1. Small and expensive just like Manhattan

2. Most places do not have ovens, just a stovetop. I looked at some places like this in Manhattan, and it was assumed you'd just be eating out most of the time, but almost every place here was sans oven. I was told by the real estate agent "we dont bake in Hong Kong." Well we do, so we had to try hard to find a place with an oven! How else do you bake brownies at home?

3. Many apartments do not have closets. Including ours. So off to the Ikea to buy a portable closet. :-)

I'll upload some pictures of the town center in my next post, but for now I leave you with our pool as seen from out cute little balcony...