Hong Kong Itinerary: How We Spent 48 Hours, Step by Step

Two days in Hong Kong is enough for one day on Hong Kong Island and one day covering Victoria Peak and Kowloon, and this is the itinerary we actually walked. We stopped in Hong Kong on the way to Australia for a Queensland road trip, arrived at 6.30 in the morning having missed a night, and made the two days work anyway. If you only have 24 hours, use day two.

Two things in Hong Kong have changed since that trip and both matter for planning. Western Market closed in November 2025 for a renovation expected to run into 2027 or 2028, and the Peak Tram is running again after the upgrade that had it shut when we visited.

Hong Kong dollar prices carry conversions at the rate of 11 September 2026, when €1 bought about HK$9.11 and $1 about HK$7.84.

Top tip: Hong Kong is a lot to take in on a short stay. Booking a custom private tour with a local on the first morning gets you oriented faster than a day of your own research does.

Our Hong Kong itinerary

Where you sleep decides what you see on a two-day trip, because Hong Kong covers about 1,110 km² (689.8 sq mi) of land across an island, a peninsula and the New Territories, and you do not want to spend half of 48 hours on a train. We picked Hong Kong Island and then built both days around it, with one crossing to Kowloon.

Hong Kong is a Special Administrative Region of China with its own currency, its own immigration control and its own transport system, so treat it as a separate destination from the mainland when you plan. The other short-stay base people recommend is Tsim Sha Tsui, on the Kowloon side, which puts you nearer the harbour views and further from the Peak.

Day 1: Wan Chai, Central and Sheung Wan

Day one runs west along Hong Kong Island from Admiralty to Sheung Wan, and it is almost all on foot. We were badly jet-lagged for it, having landed at 6.30 a.m. with no sleep behind us, which is why this day is the lighter of the two and why it can be stretched over a full day with shopping and food stops if you arrive rested.

Pacific Place

Pacific Place is the first shopping centre on the walk and the first of many, because Hong Kong has an extraordinary number of malls. We were not there to shop. We went in because it was around 30°C (86°F) with 80% humidity and the malls are air-conditioned, which turns out to be a legitimate reason to use them. It sits on the way to Hong Kong Park.

Hong Kong Park

Hong Kong Park is where the walk stops being about buildings, and the contrast of old trees against the towers is the reason to go in. Hong Kong keeps a lot of green space, from country parks across the territory down to city parks like this one.

Inside the park are an aviary, the Forsgate Conservatory, which is an enclosed air-conditioned garden, and the Flagstaff House Museum of Tea Ware in the oldest surviving colonial building in Hong Kong. I wanted to see the tea ware museum and it was not open when we got there, so check its hours before you count on it. The park also sits beside the Peak Tram’s Kennedy Road stop.

Bank of China Tower

The Bank of China Tower is a 70-storey office building whose faceted shape was designed by I. M. Pei and is usually explained as bamboo shoots. It keeps appearing in lists of things to see, and honestly, in a city this full of towers it is not one. The 43rd-floor observation deck has been closed to the public for several years, so if you have read somewhere that there is a free viewpoint up there, there is not.

Lan Kwai Fong

Lan Kwai Fong is the restaurant and bar quarter of Central, packed into a couple of short sloping streets. It is quiet by day and the reason to come is the evening, when the whole block fills up and the lights make more sense of it.

Mid-level escalators

The Central to Mid-Levels escalator is the longest covered outdoor escalator system in the world and riding the whole thing is worth doing once. It combines 20 escalators with 3 inclined moving walkways, runs 800 m (0.5 mi) and climbs 135 m (442.9 ft) from Queen’s Road Central to Conduit Road, and end to end it takes 20 to 25 minutes.

One thing to know: it only runs one way at a time. It runs downhill in the early morning for commuters and uphill from mid-morning until midnight, so if you turn up at 8 a.m. expecting to ride up, you will be walking. It was closed for maintenance during our visit and we could not even photograph it, which is a risk worth checking for before you build a morning around it.

Read more fun facts about Hong Kong and China in general.

Western Market

Western Market is closed. The red Edwardian building in Sheung Wan shut in November 2025 for a major renovation, with its commercial tenants required to move out by the end of October 2025, and the work is expected to take a little over two years. Any itinerary you find that sends you inside is out of date.

We walked in on the way to the water because the building intrigued us, and found shops, cafés and a ballroom on the top floor. It is Hong Kong’s oldest surviving market building. The original South Block dates from 1844 and the North Block, which is what stands today, opened in 1906. The South Block was demolished in 1981 and the Sheung Wan Complex replaced it on Queen’s Road Central seven years later. The North Block was declared a monument and reopened in 1991 as the shopping complex we saw. The exterior is still worth walking past while the work is under way.

Central and Western District Promenade

The Central and Western District Promenade is a few minutes’ walk from Western Market and gives you the harbour at ground level rather than from a tower. It runs about 600 m (0.4 mi) with grass, a playground and shaded benches, and the views across the water are the point.

We followed the path west along the water rather than covering the busier eastern end, so there is more of it than we saw.

Sun Yat Sen Memorial Park

Sun Yat Sen Memorial Park is the end of the day-one walk, built around a statue of Sun Yat Sen, who spent his student years in Hong Kong. Alongside the statue there is outdoor gym equipment, a swimming pool, an indoor sports centre, a playground and public toilets, which makes it more of a working local park than a sight.

Old double-decker tram or metro back

The old double-decker trams are the atmospheric way back east and the MTR is the fast, air-conditioned one. We had planned on the tram and took the metro, because by that point the jet lag had won. If you are fresher than we were, take the tram: it runs along the north shore of the island through Wan Chai and Causeway Bay, and it is the cheapest sightseeing in the city.

Day 2: Victoria Peak, Tsim Sha Tsui and Yau Ma Tei

Day two covers more of the famous sights than day one, so use this one if you have a single day in Hong Kong. It runs from Victoria Peak down to the harbour, across to Kowloon by ferry and north to the night markets.

Victoria Peak

Victoria Peak is the view everyone comes for, and it is completely weather-dependent. Ours was in cloud. We had not thought to check before setting out, and the car climbed straight into a grey fog that made the edge of the mountain invisible.

What we did instead worked: we walked the short trail from the Peak Tower area round to where Lugard Road meets Harlech Road, then took the Morning Trail down past Pinewood Battery to Kotewall Road. Locals were coming up it as a workout. Going down was the better direction in that humidity, and the sky cleared as we lost height, so we got the Hong Kong views without the famous one. Check the Peak’s visibility before you set out, because a cloudy day up there buys you nothing.

How to get to Victoria Peak

The Peak Tram is the way up, and it is running again. The funicular was closed for the sixth-generation upgrade when we visited, which is why we took a car instead, and it reopened with larger cars and a rebuilt lower terminus. Buses get you partway but take a long time. A taxi or a ride-hail drops you at the Peak, which is slightly higher than the tram terminus.

Skip the line to take the Peak Tram up

Queues at the lower terminus are the standard complaint about the Peak Tram, and the way around them is a timed ticket. You can purchase a skip-the-line Peak Tram ticket with the option to add the Sky Terrace and Madame Tussauds in the same booking.

The ferry to Tsim Sha Tsui

The Star Ferry across Victoria Harbour takes about 15 minutes and is the cheapest good thing in Hong Kong. We took it from Central Ferry Pier after the hike and had lunch on the Kowloon side. Pay with an Octopus card and sit on the upper deck.

Kowloon Park

Kowloon Park is the quiet refuge in the middle of Tsim Sha Tsui, and the contrast with the streets outside is hard to believe until you walk in. It holds a Chinese garden, an aviary, a bird lake and a public swimming pool complex, and the remains of the Kowloon West Battery, because the site was the Whitfield Barracks before it was a park.

Note that this is Kowloon Park, in Tsim Sha Tsui, and not Kowloon Walled City Park, which is a different and also excellent park about 4 km (2.5 mi) north in Kowloon City, on the site of the demolished Walled City. Guides confuse the two constantly. The one on this walk is Kowloon Park.

Avenue of Comic Stars

The Avenue of Comic Stars runs along the edge of Kowloon Park and takes about ten minutes. It has sculptures of Hong Kong comic characters and handprints of the artists who drew them, and it works as a corridor from the park straight onto Nathan Road.

Nathan Road

Nathan Road is Kowloon’s main shopping street, running north from the harbour through Tsim Sha Tsui and beyond, with a mix of individual shops and malls along it. We walked it south, dipping into a few stores, then turned toward the waterfront for the Avenue of Stars.

The Avenue of Stars

The Avenue of Stars is Hong Kong’s film-industry promenade on the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront, with the Bruce Lee statue as its most photographed piece. It closed at the end of 2015 for a long renovation and reopened on 31 January 2019 with more greenery and seating.

One correction worth making, because guides written between 2015 and 2019 still circulate: the Garden of Stars was the temporary stand-in for it, on the Tsim Sha Tsui East Waterfront Podium Garden. When the Avenue reopened, the statues and handprints went back to the waterfront and the podium garden returned to being an ordinary quiet garden. Go to the Avenue.

Tsim Sha Tsui Promenade

The Tsim Sha Tsui Promenade is the wide waterfront walk the Avenue of Stars forms part of, and it is where the harbour view that appears on every Hong Kong postcard is taken from. It runs past the Hong Kong Museum of Art, the Hong Kong Space Museum and the Hong Kong Cultural Centre, and it is the place to stand for the nightly light show.

Langham Place Shopping Mall

Langham Place in Mong Kok is the mall to go into if the luxury ones have started to blur. It rises through around 15 floors of shops, places to eat and bars, and it caters to ordinary budgets rather than to handbag money. We stopped for a bite on the way to the Ladies Market, which is a few minutes away, and could happily have lost a day in it.

Ladies Market

The Ladies Market on Tung Choi Street is two long aisles of stalls selling cheap clothing, souvenirs and small goods, and haggling is expected even at those prices. It is the opposite of Langham Place in every way, which is the reason to do both in the same evening. It runs into the night.

Hong Kong light show

The Symphony of Lights runs every night at 8 p.m. across the towers on both sides of Victoria Harbour and lasts a little under 15 minutes. The Tsim Sha Tsui Promenade is the place to watch it from, standing on the Kowloon side looking back at the island.

Hong Kong light show cruise

Watching the show from the water avoids the crowd on the promenade and gets you closer to the towers. Two options cover the short and the long version.

1. Hong Kong evening cruise in a Chinese junk boat. A 45-minute sail across Victoria Harbour in a traditional junk with a drink included, timed for the light show. Book this cruise.

2. The Symphony of Lights and buffet dinner cruise. Two hours on the harbour with a Thai and Western buffet and unlimited drinks, boarding at either Central or Tsim Sha Tsui pier. Book this cruise.

Hong Kong tours

A guided tour buys you context you cannot get by walking, and on a two-day stop it buys back the research time. The 5 options below cover orientation, sights, the social side of the city and the evening.

Private “Welcome to Hong Kong” tour with a local

This is the orientation tour: a local spends a few hours showing you how the city works and giving you restaurant, transport and neighbourhood advice built around your interests, so that you can then explore on your own. It suits a first morning. Book this tour.

Hong Kong with a local guide, customised

This one is for sights rather than logistics. You set the length, the guide builds the itinerary around what you want to see, and the programme can change mid-tour if something catches you, from Wong Tai Sin Temple to the Hong Kong Railway Museum. Book this tour.

Premium Hong Kong Island tour with dinner cruise and light show

A full day that packs the Peak Tram, the Star Ferry crossing to Kowloon and a harbour buffet dinner under the light show into one booking. It is the option for people with one day and no wish to plan it. Book this tour.

Kowloon: the dark side of Hong Kong walking tour

This three-hour walk through Mong Kok and Sham Shui Po is about housing, poverty and gentrification rather than skyline, and the guide talks about the subdivided flats, the decline of the street markets and what redevelopment is doing to the poorest district in the city. It is not a cheerful afternoon and it is the one people remember. Book this tour.

Hong Kong by night

Five and a half hours covering the junk-boat harbour cruise with unlimited drinks, dinner up at the Peak and the Temple Street Night Market in Kowloon, finishing at your hotel or in the middle of the nightlife. Book this tour.

What is special about Sundays in Hong Kong

Sundays in Hong Kong look different because the city’s domestic workers take their one day off together. Streets, footbridges and public squares fill with women sitting on cardboard and tarpaulins, eating, talking, singing and sleeping, and there are more than 300,000 of them.

They are mostly Filipina and Indonesian domestic helpers, employed on contracts that require them to live in their employer’s home, and Sunday is when they get a space of their own. They share food from home, do each other’s hair and send money back. We had no idea what we were looking at until we went and found out, and knowing changes how the scene reads.

The best time to travel to Hong Kong

October to early December is the strongest window, with lower humidity, reliable sun and comfortable temperatures. It is also when prices are highest, which is the trade.

The high season runs October to mid-May. Between mid-December and February it can drop to around 10°C (50°F), and January is the driest month with roughly one rainy day a week. Mid-May and June are still workable but humidity is already above 80% and showers are routine. July to September is the hottest and wettest stretch, August is the wettest month, and typhoons and thunderstorms are normal from mid-May to late September. If you are shopping, the two sale periods run December to February and July to September.

Where to stay in Hong Kong

Staying on Hong Kong Island puts you near Central, the Peak and the bar districts; staying in Tsim Sha Tsui puts you on the harbour view and nearer the markets. Both work for two days. The 4 hotels below cover the range, and all four are on Wan Chai or Tsim Sha Tsui MTR stops.

Boutique: Kew Green Hotel Wanchai. This is where we stayed, two minutes from Wan Chai MTR, and it was chosen partly because the room came with a mobile phone loaded with unlimited data, which meant no local SIM and no hotspot for two days. It is a four-star at budget four-star prices, with a desk, a kettle and an in-bath shower in the rooms, a gym, and a restaurant doing breakfast for an extra charge, lunch and dinner. Check prices and availability for Kew Green Hotel Wanchai.

Budget: AMU Dreamhouse. A small, bright hostel in Yau Tsim Mong with a choice of dorm bed or private room, free wifi, a communal living space and two MTR lines within reach. Check prices and availability for AMU Dreamhouse.

Chain: Holiday Inn Golden Mile. In the middle of Tsim Sha Tsui with the MTR station beside it, a rooftop pool, an on-site restaurant, a gym and wifi throughout. The location is what you are paying for. Check prices and availability for Holiday Inn Golden Mile.

Luxury: The St. Regis Hong Kong. The five-star option, in Wan Chai, with an outdoor pool, large rooms looking over the city and a 24-hour desk. Check prices and availability for The St. Regis Hong Kong.

For a self-catering apartment rather than a room, which makes more sense once a stay runs past a few nights, Vrbo lists whole flats across the island and Kowloon.

How to get around in Hong Kong

Hong Kong’s public transport is reason enough not to rent anything, and one card pays for all of it. The options below run from the fastest to the most scenic.

MTR

The MTR is the fast option and it reaches everywhere you are likely to go, with underground, overground and light rail lines running every two to six minutes from about 5 a.m. to 1 a.m. It carries several million passengers a day and it is the default for crossing the territory.

If you are in Hong Kong for a day and moving a lot, the MTR Tourist Day Pass gives 24 hours of unlimited travel for HK$75 (about €8, $10). Otherwise use an Octopus card, below.

Buses

Buses cost slightly less than the MTR and show you the city on the way, which the underground sections of the MTR do not. The network is less dense, and Citymapper will tell you whether a bus route exists for what you want. Pay with an Octopus card or with cash, and note that drivers give no change, so have the exact fare ready.

Minibuses

Hong Kong’s minibuses come in two colours and they behave differently. Green minibuses run fixed routes with designated stops and take Octopus or exact change, but they have no bell, so you call out when you want to get off. Red minibuses have no fixed route and take cash only; you pay on the way out, you do not know the fare until then, it is never much, and the driver does give change.

Trams

The double-decker trams on Hong Kong Island are the cheapest sightseeing anywhere in the city, at a flat HK$3.30 (about €0.36, $0.42) a ride regardless of distance, a fare that rose from HK$3.00 in May 2025. They run along the north shore through the oldest parts of the island. Board at the back and leave at the front, which is the opposite of what you expect.

The Octopus Card

The Octopus card is the one thing to buy in your first hour, and it works like London’s Oyster except that it also buys your lunch. Top it up at convenience stores and station machines, then tap on buses, trams, minibuses, the ferry and the MTR.

It is also accepted in shops, cinemas, car parks and vending machines across the city, which matters because almost everything else in Hong Kong takes cards too, so an Octopus plus a bank card means you never need to withdraw Hong Kong dollars at all. Get your tourist Octopus card here.

Uber and taxis

We used Uber a few times to cover the gaps between areas that public transport serves badly, including the run up to the Peak. One thing to check before you rely on it: Hong Kong passed a bill in October 2025 bringing ride-hailing platforms under a licensing regime, with the first licensed operators expected from late 2026, so confirm the app is working when you arrive.

Taxis are the alternative and they are colour-coded by territory, which trips people up. Red taxis work across Hong Kong except on Tung Chung Road and South Lantau, green ones serve only the New Territories, blue ones only Lantau, and all three serve the airport. Check which colour covers your hotel before you queue.

Hop-on hop-off bus

An open-top bus is the way to see the city when the heat has beaten you and you still want to be outside. The ticket covers three routes with recorded commentary in ten languages and includes a return Star Ferry crossing to Tsim Sha Tsui. The Classic ticket runs 24 hours, while Premium and Deluxe run 48 and add extras such as a Peak Tram Sky Pass and a walking tour. View the ticket options.

Hop-on hop-off boat

The harbour version does the same job from the water, with a one-day ticket, a complimentary soft drink and unlimited hops at four stops around Victoria Harbour. Get your ticket.

How to get to Hong Kong

Hong Kong International Airport is one of the better-connected airports in Asia and almost everyone arrives through it. We flew Cathay Pacific direct from Brussels and tried Premium Economy, which sits between the comfort of Economy and the price of Business, and you can read our Cathay Pacific Premium Economy review here.

Fares move a lot through the year, so check the Cathay Pacific website for current prices on your route before committing to dates.

How to get from Hong Kong Airport to the city

Getting in from the airport takes between 25 minutes and an hour and a half depending on what you pick, and the right answer depends on where you are staying and how much luggage you have. The 5 options below run from fastest to cheapest.

Hong Kong MTR Airport Express

The Airport Express is the fastest route in, reaching Kowloon and Hong Kong Island in about half an hour, and it runs from roughly 5.50 a.m. to just after 1 a.m. There is wifi on board, and your ticket also covers the free shuttle buses that run from the Kowloon and Hong Kong stations to a list of hotels.

A single adult fare to Hong Kong Station, the far end of the line, is about HK$115 (€13, $15), with a return at about HK$205 (€22, $26). If you are on a one-day stopover, the same-day return costs the same as a single. Get your train ticket now.

For a stay of a few days with a lot of metro use, the combination ticket is better value: it covers the Airport Express plus unlimited MTR travel for 72 hours. Get your MTR Airport Express combo ticket here.

Hong Kong Airport shuttle bus

The hotel shuttle leaves the airport every 30 minutes between about 7 a.m. and 11 p.m. and stops at more than 100 hotels, which removes the last leg with your bags. Tickets are sold at the counter in the arrivals hall, and Klook lists the current Hong Kong airport transfer options.

AirBuses

The AirBuses are ordinary city buses that happen to call at the airport, and they are the budget route in. They stop at regular bus stops rather than hotels, the journey takes considerably longer because they stop everywhere, and they fill up with people going to work. Citybus and Long Win are the two operators, the buses are air-conditioned double-deckers and the newer ones have wifi.

Taxi

A taxi takes you door to door, and the colour rule applies here too: red serves most of Hong Kong, green only the New Territories, blue only Lantau, and all three serve the airport. Check which one covers your hotel before you join a queue, because joining the wrong one wastes twenty minutes.

Pre-booked transfer

A pre-booked transfer removes the queue, the payment and the explaining, which is worth paying for when you land with large bags. We booked this Tesla transfer both ways and the experience was mixed. On arrival the driver was waiting with a sign, took the bags and dropped us at the hotel door. On the return leg it was raining hard, we were waiting under cover, and the driver did not get out to help even when we signalled; we loaded our own backpacks and got soaked doing it. That is the only time a private transfer has gone like that for us.

If you want the same convenience with the luggage help included, this MPV transfer takes up to six people with all fees included.

Stay connected when visiting Hong Kong

An eSIM is the simplest way to have data from the moment you land, and in Hong Kong it saves you queuing for a SIM in the arrivals hall. Our hotel supplied a phone with unlimited data, which is a nice perk and not something most hotels offer, so plan on arranging your own.

We have used Airalo eSIMs for several years and took one on this trip, using it again in Brisbane, Australia afterwards. Day passes suit a short stop better than a monthly plan. Use code HARRY5578 for a discount on your first eSIM. Note that an eSIM covers one phone; if several of you want to share one connection, a rented portable hotspot is the different product that does that job.

WonderfulWanderings Pro Tips

The 5 tips below are each a decision you make before you leave the hotel, and two of them are about a place that is no longer open.

1. Do not walk to Western Market. It closed in November 2025 for a renovation running past 2027. The building is still worth seeing from outside; there is nothing to go into.
2. Check the Peak for cloud before you go up. Ours was in fog and the view was gone. The Morning Trail down to Kotewall Road is the salvage plan, and it is a good walk in its own right.
3. The mid-levels escalator only runs one way at a time. Downhill early morning, uphill from mid-morning to midnight. Turn up at the wrong hour and you climb.
4. Buy an Octopus card in the first hour and stop thinking about cash. It pays for the MTR, buses, minibuses, trams, the Star Ferry, convenience stores and vending machines, which means you need no Hong Kong dollars at all.
5. Confirm ride-hailing before you rely on it. Hong Kong’s licensing regime for platforms passed in October 2025 and the first licences are expected from late 2026, so check the app works before you plan a Peak trip around it.

About the author. The two days in this itinerary were walked by Sofie Couwenbergh, who founded Wonderful Wanderings in 2012, on a stopover between Belgium and Queensland, with tickets provided by Cathay Pacific so she could write an honest review of their Premium Economy class. The guide is maintained by the Wonderful Wanderings editorial team, which covers Hong Kong and China for independent travellers, including the tours, transfers and hotels worth booking, and updates this page when attractions close, fares change and transport rules move.