A Day in Macau

We decided to spend a day in Macau, which was very much like Las Vegas. The islands that make up Macau were about an hour long ferry ride away from Hong Kong. It turned out to be a very long day, which led to an hour long nap on the return ferry ride. I only dozed briefly on the way there. The ferry was pretty cool as it was a hovercraft type vessel...
Our day in Macau was one of the only 100% (and very bright!) sunny days during our two weeks in China. Unfortunately, the bright sunlight caused issues with my new camera. I think I had the wrong setting selected during a previous outing or something but all of my pictures turned out blue!! See?
This was truly unfortunate because Mindy was purposely not taking too many pictures with her camera since I had my awesome new Nikon. But she had enough to somewhat make up for my mistake with my new toy. So unless otherwise noted, pictures shown in this post were taken by Mindy.

Macau was different from Hong Kong as it had Portuguese influence rather than British influence. Instead of signs in Chinese and English, the signs were in Chinese and Portuguese. I was very excited about this (it's all those Brazilians I know!). The architecture also had some Old World influence, especially in one particularly tourist-y area. There was an old mission with only the front facade still standing...very cool.

Here's more cool architecture:
And then there were the casinos...some old, some new. Macau seemed like it was undergoing the same transformation that Las Vegas did in the 1990s. We went to The Venetian which Mindy told me was laid out in the same way as the one in Vegas. We did some shopping (I actually got a new Fossil watch...a gift for graduation from Mindy & Brian)...mostly the window variety since there were very nice and expensive stores there. It was fun though.
We ate a huge buffet dinner and then did some more window shopping in stores like Fendi, Chanel and other such stores in which I was afraid to breathe for fear that I might have to pay for it. We were watched and followed around in every single store we set foot in, even Fossil. I didn't like it but I guess I do look pretty shady. ;-)

By this time, it was night and my pictures once again turned out very nicely...
Now this picture was not taken using a tripod or by setting it down and using the timer. Nor was it taken using a "night scene" setting. My new gadget has vibration reduction and high ISO settings. It may not be perfect, but it's pretty darn good. Anyways, I will be quiet about my camera now...as it does have a "blue" problem.

I think that might be it for Macau. We were pretty exhausted and of course, my feet hurt pretty badly, that sleeping came pretty easy on the way home.