Black Rain

Continuing the recap ...

Because we slept late, we woke up late -- typical of our weekends, of course. I'd researched a number of walking tours for Macau (澳門), and we set out around noon (after navigating our way out of the casino labyrinth).

Huddling under our umbrellas, we made our way up San Ma Lo (新馬路), through Leal Senado Square (議事亭前地), stopping for food only at the milk pudding joint (義順燉奶). We're up at the famous stone facade ruins of St. Paul Church (大三巴聖保羅教堂), and head into the Museum of Macao to hide from the rain.

That's all fine until we leave the museum to see that the lightning storm had gotten orders of magnitude worse! The lightning cracks and the sky fills with a brighter grey for a split second.

"One mississippi,
two mississip--"

The thunder follows almost immediately after: we're pretty close to wherever the lightning is hitting, and my guess is it's at Guia Hill (松山公園).

Running from tree to tree, our umbrellas serving as feeble rain protection, we retreat hastily down the hill.

Every one of the Church's steps is overflowing with a river of water some inches deep. Every one of my steps rewards me with a squelching noise and water flowing in and around my toes ... inside of my sneakers.

Completely soaked.

We duck into a Quiksilver store where I buy my souvenir for the trip: a pair of Quiksilver flip flops. (Alongside us are 20 other couples doing the same thing.) We decide to call it a day and head home: we spend the rest of the day wandering through the resort and mall stores, and then eat eat eat.

Afterwards, we head back to the room.

"Okay, let's shower, rest for a bit, then head downstairs and hit the tables."
"Cool."

Not an hour later, we fell asleep in front of the TV.