Angie's Adventures: Macau

On Saturday December 19, Mom, Dad and I went to a place called the Island of Macau. It is an island about 1 hr boat ride away from Hong Kong. It is an island still owned by China, but like Hong Kong it is governed by itself. Macau was owned by Portugal for 450 years until Portugal gave it back to China in 1999. There is still a large European influence, as can be seen in many of the buildings and life. The island is interesting, there is the old section, which has a large Portuguese influence. Then there is a new section that is full of casino's and very modern. Apparently there are a lot of high rollers that come and play at the casino's and gambling brings in a lot of money. We didn't spend any time in this part of the island, except to catch a taxi!

This sign is typical for signs on the island. I thought it was fascinating that all of the signs were in Chinese and Portuguese.

In order to get to Macau, we took a boat. This is what the boats looked like that we took.

This is me and Dad getting into the boat.

This is part of the old town square. They had up some beautiful decorations for Christmas!

Macau apparently is pretty well known for it's shopping as well. Look at how many people are on the streets. This was actually not very crowded yet!

There were some pretty amazing places that are on the island. The first one we went to is the Fortaleza do Monte. It was built in 1616 and originally was where the settlement was founded. The walls are thick and there are big cannons that surround the top to help with protection (or for modern day peoples such as myself to take pictures with!)

This is the view of Macau from the top of the wall.

We also went to the facade of the Ruinas de Sao Paulo. This is what remains of a Jesuit Cathedral built in the 1600's. It is built at the top of a steep staircase. It's beautiful.

We were able to go behind the facade and climb up a staircase to look out some of the windows and get a great view of the city.

We went to a Catholic church called St. Dominic's Church.

While walking around we saw some celebrations going on in honor of Christmas. Some of them were very much reminder of the Chinese influence! We were able to see a dragon dance... well, actually 2 dragons dancing with typical Chinese instruments being played for music.

While trying to find a Protestant Cemetery, we went into a large city park called Luis Camoes Garden. It was a beautiful garden with plenty of plants, large open areas and even some old Chinese men playing what we think was checkers. We also came upon some Chinese women doing some sort of dance. We weren't sure for what, but it sure was fun to watch.