The view from our hotel room in the Hotel Lisboa.
Another view of the caramel / honeycomb Hotel Lisboa tower.
This dedicated bathmat hotline is located within arm's reach of the toilet. Because you never know when you're really, really going to need one.
Our bathtub at the Hotel Lisboa featured jacuzzi jets, a foot massager that shoots water out of it, a steam sauna, a handheld shower, shower jets that shoot down from above and horizontally left to right, a radio, and a fan, all controlled from the computer console at upper left. Here, Cathy is giving the thing a... guess what... a dry run.
The Shangainese hairy crab is in the same family as the king, dungeness, and east coast softshell crabs we can get in the U.S. It happened to be in season when we were in China so I tried it out. The waitstaff made a big production of taking the thing apart for me, and laughed at me when I tried to drink from the bowl of tea-like hand cleanser placed at the table. The crab itself is wonderful, more meaty and less flaky than the other varieties.
Motorcycles are the way to go in Macau.
We have read the Hotel Lisboa described as a "monstrosity" and "Las Vegas on acid" by two separate sources.
I can't really argue with either assessment.
See what I mean?
It's kind of overwhelming!
But it looks a little less daunting in the daytime.
The Clube Militar in downtown Macau was a classy supper club for Portuguese soldiers, but in 1995 they refurbished their beautiful high-ceilinged dining room and opened it up to the public. Lunch here was one of the best meals of the whole trip. I am in this photo in the BRIGHT YELLOW SHIRT.
Owen concentrates all his energy into figuring out where the heck that Jardim de Vasco da Gama is.
The average Chinese hotel room has a lightswitch console like this one built into a bedside table. Putting all the lightswitches right next to the bed is not some sort of earth-shattering concept but we just could not get used to it. We kept feeling up the walls for lightswitches throughout the trip.
Cathy gives props to Vasco da Gama.
Typical signage in Macau has Chinese characters, a Romanized transcription of the Chinese, and a translation into Portuguese.
As if that's not complicated enough, businesses that inherently involve another language beyond Portuguese and Chinese (Thai, say), have signs out front that are, like, fuhggedaboutit.
Don't get me wrong-- I had the time of my life at my own wedding. But thankfully it's the *marriage* that's forever, not the wedding.
Macau is strewn with buildings like these, painted in the Portuguese style with vivid colors.
We wandered into a musum that included a "tree of computer screens" and a console at the bottom where users can doodle something and have it show up sporadically on the various screens.