Sunday 17 June 2012

Central Mid-Levels Escalators




According to the Guinness World Records,the Central Mid-Levels Escalators is the world's longest outdoor covered escalator system in the world.

This 790 metre interconnected ride, takes 20 minutes to get to the top.

On my second trip to Hong Kong, I tried finding it but failed until this round .

Am going to divulge my experience so that whoever is reading this blog can hopefully benefit from it.




We started from Central MTR Station exit D2.

Walk along Pedder Street and you should arrive at this intersection where there is with a shopping centre with huge posters advertising the luxury brands




Make your way towards Lyndhurst Terrace, where an ex governor got his egg tart supply from .

The best road to take would be Wellington Street where Yung Kee, a famous roast goose restaurant is.

Take note that the pavement here has many levels of steps that go bobbing up and down throughout the length of the street





When you reach a sign that says Lyndhurst Terrace, a lot of tourists get confused here. Some tend to either give up or make the mistake of going up the terrace to look for the escalators.

Continue walking until you see an overhead covered pedestrian walkway that looks something like this example connecting the two buildings, in the picture below.

Look for an opening that can take you into the overhead pedestrian walkway, the escalators start somewhere around there.





I have to confess that I had no idea how far up and where we would eventually end up .

We even made plans to backtrack later after our little adventure, to go for lunch at Yung Kee and even takeaway some egg tarts




It was after we passed by the Soho area and interesting sights such as this , that I realised, tourists had seriously begun to trickle down




The most pressing issue on hand was , there were a heck of a lot of stairs to climb all the way down to the bottom again.

The escalators only go one way.

But we really wanted to go see where and how the entire journey would end.





It was not only extremely quiet and lonely. I actually begun to get a little spooked out. Fearful even. Panicking about our journey down .

We were already so high up, the air was definitely cooler

Thank goodness we finally came to this.

Your journey will end abruptly cos there isn't much to gawk at except for some expensive condominiums with bellmen .




It was here that we attempted our first minibus ride

Goodness ! What a scream it was !

The driver tore down the steep hill, almost like he was drifting around the bends till my knees started to quiver .I held on for dear life to my seat,knuckles white, face drained of colour.

I think the seats are plastic wrapped in case tourists like us throw up.





In no time,we found our selves at Pedder Street again.
We chucked out our plans for roast goose and tarts and headed back to Kowloon Island via MTR.

Once is definitely more than enough.

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