I’ve been to Hong Kong more times than I can count, and it still gets me every single time. There’s something about the specific density of it — the way you can turn a corner and go from a century-old temple to a Michelin-starred cocktail bar in about forty steps — that makes every other city feel slightly boring. It is, genuinely, one of the greatest cities in the world. And if you only have 48 hours, here’s exactly how I’d spend them.
DAY ONE
7am — Victoria Peak
If you can drag yourself out of bed — and you should, jet lag be damned — get to Victoria Peak before the rest of the tour buses arrive. You can hike up, or take the Peak Tram, which has been iconic for ages. At this hour, with the harbour below still catching the early light and the skyscrapers emerging from morning mist, it’s one of those views that earns its reputation (despite it being a tourist funnel).
Victoria PeakUnsplash
10am — Breakfast at a Cha Chaan Teng
Please leave the pancakes and the eggs Benedicts behind. The cha chaan teng is Hong Kong’s great social equaliser: bankers and construction workers, same stools, same eggs.
My pick is My Cup of Tea in Wanchai. It was popular on local blogs a few years back and has mercifully stayed off the international tourist radar. Order the milk tea and the egg pineapple bun. Sit at whatever stool is free. Trust me, this is the breakfast of kings.
1pm — Lunch at Lin Heung Lau
Lin Heung Lau has been around long enough that it has become part of the city’s furniture. It’s a proper old-school Cantonese restaurant — push carts, aunties who have precisely zero patience, and hot dimsums coming out in a constant, glorious rotation. Walk around, point at what you want, grab it before someone else does. The Chaozhou-style steamed dumplings, the coconut puddings, the egg tarts — it’s all very good and the portions are generous. In the mornings, locals read newspapers here while the first carts come out. The chaos is, I promise, entirely part of the charm.
Lin Heung Lau, Central HK
3 pm — Hollywood Road and the Mid-Levels Escalator
The Mid-Levels Escalator is the world’s longest outdoor covered escalator system, which sounds like a strange thing to put on an itinerary but is genuinely one of the more pleasurable ways to move through a city. It runs upward from Central through Soho and the surrounding residential streets, and riding it slowly while the city unfolds around you is — I’ll say it — a transportive experience. Peel off onto Hollywood Road for art galleries and antique shops. The Man Mo Temple is here too. Stop into Select 18 for vintage if that’s your thing. It’s mine.
5pm — Sunset at Kennedy Town
Alright, it’s time to make a decision about your sunset. The Star Ferry from Central to Tsim Sha Tsui is legitimately beautiful and costs about HK$6.50, which is almost too good of a value for the skyline you get. But I prefer Kennedy Town Waterfront — take the tram out, walk along the seafront, watch the sun drop into open water. It’s quieter and more real and the views are stunning.
8pm — Dinner
This is where you need to know yourself a little.
If you want to eat what Hong Kong actually tastes like, go to Luk On Kui. Roasted goose, pork with garlic bok choi, more pushcart dimsums. This is the meal. Unpretentious, deeply satisfying, the kind of dinner you’ll remember for years.
If you want something a level up, Ho Lee Fook in Central has been quietly exceptional for about a decade. Chef ArChan Chan’s Cantonese menu is contemporary and delicious — the Kurobuta pork char siu and the smoked crispy-skin three-yellow chicken are both outstanding, and if you remember to call 72 hours ahead and pre-order the Ho Lee Duck, you will have one of the better meals of your trip.
If this is a special occasion and money isn’t the primary concern: MONO, Ricardo Chaneton’s Michelin-starred Venezuelan-meets-French-meets-Asian tasting menu at HKD 1,888 per person, is a genuine event. Or Arbor, Eric Räty’s two-Michelin-starred Nordic-Japanese restaurant, where the seasonal tasting menus start at HKD 1,688 and the genmaicha and caviar dessert — N25 caviar with genmaicha ice cream, mochi, shortbread — is the kind of thing you don’t get to eat everyday.
10pm — The Bars
Hong Kong has some of the best cocktail bars in the world. Not “for Asia.” In the world. I mean this without hyperbole!
Start at Bar Leone. Lorenzo Antinori’s bar was named Best Bar in the World in 2025 and every time I walk in I understand exactly why. Inside, there is Vatican kitsch on the walls, vintage football jerseys, photos of popes. The Negroni is one of the finest I’ve had anywhere. Order it with the focaccia topped with mortadella, whipped ricotta, pickles and ham, and stay for the best damn smoked olives you’ve ever had in your life.
Bar Leone
Then go to Penicillin, if you have the legs for it. Agung Prabowo and Roman Ghale have built something genuinely unlike anything else here — a zero-waste bar where the tables are made from trees that fell in typhoons and every ingredient on the menu has a story about where it came from and how it got here. The Hot, Flat and Crowded — mango-curd gin, salted burnt butter, grilled purple cabbage cream soda, clear lemon — is a brilliant drink. The Circular Fashioned, made with leftover duck fat applejack and salted artichoke, is even better.
End the night at The Old Man if you still have anything left. It’s Hemingway-themed. The communal T-shaped bar is designed specifically so strangers end up in conversation. Order the Lost Brothers — tonka bean, cardamom syrup, barley cold brew — and let the night do what it wants.
DAY TWO
9am — Tim Ho Wan
Dim sum for breakfast is the only correct way to start a morning in Hong Kong. Tim Ho Wan is Michelin-starred and you will cry when you bite into the dimsums. There will be a queue. The baked BBQ pork buns alone — crispy on top, molten and savoury inside — justify the wait entirely. Trust me, you’ll keep coming back.
Post-breakfast — Ferry to Kowloon
Take the ferry from Central harbour. I keep saying this to people and they keep taking the MTR instead and I keep being disappointed in them. The crossing takes about ten minutes and the views of the skyline from the water are incomparably good.
On the other side, Tsim Sha Tsui is a different register of the city entirely — wider streets, different energy, and hidden in the lanes around Chung Kee Mansion, a collection of vintage watch dealers. Take lots of cash if you are planning to buy a watch.
1pm — Lunch at Cheung Hing Kee Shanghai Pan Fried Buns
On the Michelin guide for years and entirely deserving of it. Pan-fried soup dumplings, crispy underneath, liquid gold inside. Bite carefully. I have ruined shirts here. But the truffle pan fried soup dumplings are worth it every single time.
3pm – 5pm — Nan Lian Garden and Wong Tai Sin
If your legs are still willing, the Nan Lian Garden near Diamond Hill is one of those places that recalibrates something in you — a Tang Dynasty-style public park with lotus ponds and wooden pavilions that exists in genuinely surreal contrast to everything else this city is. The adjacent Chi Lin Nunnery extends the peace considerably. Then take the MTR one stop to Wong Tai Sin Temple, where the architecture is extraordinary and, according to local belief, every wish made here is granted.
6pm – 9pm — Temple Street Night Market
Yes, it’s touristy. It’s also very good — fortune tellers, street food, counterfeit goods of wildly varying quality, and the particular energy of a night market that has been exactly what it is for decades and has no interest in being anything else. Go hungry!
9 pm — Back to Central
Cross back on the ferry again — the night skyline from the water is, if anything, better than the day — and head to whichever bars you didn’t make it to last night.
Ping Pong 129 Gintonería in Sai Ying Pun, down a red door in what used to be an actual ping pong hall, is one of the most effortlessly cool bars in the city. Concrete walls, crisp G&Ts, tapas that keep you ordering one more round.
Dead Poets in Soho is named after the 27 Club and serves cocktails priced at around HKD 80 each, which in Central is essentially free. Small space, loud music, staff who treat you like you’ve stumbled into a very good private party.
And if you want to finish somewhere genuinely singular: The Savory Project, from the team behind the legendary Coa. The entire menu is built around the idea that cocktails should be savoury rather than sweet — ingredients run to beef jerky, fungi, corn husks, Japanese white soy, Sichuan peppercorn. The custom hexagonal bar puts you face to face with bartenders who are genuinely excited about what they’re making, which is infectious. Order the Mala Punch — Sichuan peppercorn, mint, passionfruit, fermented bean, gin — and you’ll feel nothing on your tongue for a while after. Also, the pizza was probably the best I’ve had in Hong Kong.
I still say that you’ve barely scratched the surface yet of what Hong Kong is capable of, but eh, it’s a good start.
