All I knew about Macau, was that it's close to Hong Kong (1 hour by ferry), had legal gambling and a famous church-on-a-hill. I didn't know it was actually just the facade and ruin, until I did some research on what to see while there. Our trip was for 5 days all up, but only one night in Macau, because the one night here cost the same as 3 nights in Zhuhai, China!
We left Singapore early in the morning and arrived in time for lunch. We took a shuttle bus from the airport to The Venetian (getting it mixed up with Wynns which is the casino only 5 minutes walk from our hotel) and were duly impressed by it. Absolutely magnificent building. It was very much like the real Venice (and reminded me a tiny bit of Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas), except not nearly as stinky!
We were only here long enough to figure out how to get to our hotel. It turned out that we'd need to get a taxi, since the other shuttles from the hotel don't go anywhere close to it. So we bundled ourselves into a taxi and headed for The Emperor (not to be mixed up with the Grand Emperor!) hotel to check in and then find ourselves some lunch.
The hotel is nothing flash - 3 stars, I guess, but it was nice enough:
As soon as we'd dumped our things (and I took a photo while it was still tidy), it was time to feed the hungry hordes. We walked out of the hotel and into the first restaurant we saw that looked reasonable:
And had won-ton soup. It wasn't too bad. Nothing great either, though. The prices were similar to what we would pay here in Singapore, if not a little higher. But then, I expected that.
After our stomachs had been satisfied, it was off in the direction of St Paul's ruin i.e. camera fodder for me! Our walk towards the old-town part of Macau took us past the Lisboa hotel and casino (the gold tower is so new, it's not on the Google map yet! You can see the excavation site for it, though):
(Speaking of Google Maps/Earth, I couldn't geo-locate any of my photos from this trip because the maps are only available in Chinese)
We then wandered down Avenue Almeida towards the Leal Senado building and Senado Square, which has a lot of portugese colonial style buildings on it:
After this we walked up Rua de Sao Paulo and were tempted by a lot of bakeries selling egg tarts (OK, yes, we had one and it was yummy!) and chinese style barbecued bacon and sweets etc. Some of us even succumbed to temptation and bought biscuits and other nice things to bring home (this wasn't me!). At the end of this road, we caught our first glimpse of St Paul's facade:
Yay! My main reason for coming on this trip was finally in sight. And closer:
Of course I had to climb the steps and then go around the back and photograph back down the stairs:
Just beautiful! There's a little museum underneath the church, but it's nothing great. But it's definitely worth climbing the steps at the back of the facade to look out the windows. As you're climbing the steps you can also see a little temple (Na Tcha temple) off to the side. It was closed when we walked up - whether it's always closed or it was the lateness of the hour (around 5pm), I don't know.
Next stop was the Mount Fortress and Museum, right next to the ruin. It again involved climbing some steps, and I ended up walking all the way around, but it was worth it for the wonderful photos I was able to take up there:
Dusk comes early and quickly here, so it was fairly dark by the time we headed back towards the casinos (which was the reason my friends came to Macau!), first past the ruins again:
And then back the way we'd come:
To the Lisboa casino:
From here we caught the shuttle bus to the ferry terminal (all casino/hotel shuttle buses meet at the ferry terminal!), from where we got on another free shuttle to go back to The Venetian which had taken all our fancy: mine to take more photos (of course!) and the sisters to feed the slot machines. The trip there and back was also an opportunity to take some photos of the bright lights there:
and back near our hotel after the sisters' wallets had been lightened:
And because we're complete sticky-beaks, we checked out the Wynns casino too. At least the foyer
Then it was time for bed, since we had a lot on our plate the next day, including the crossing to China.
