[ ITINERARY · THE DISPATCH ]

Two Days in Macau: Egg Tarts, Casino Excess, and a Portuguese Ghost in China

A Macau 2 day itinerary that splits the city in two: the old Portuguese town with its egg tarts and crumbling churches, and the deranged Vegas-on-steroids strip of the Cotai casinos.

A Macau 2 day itinerary is really a tale of two cities wearing one coat. On one side you’ve got faded colonial Portugal — pastel churches, blue-and-white tiles, the smell of egg tarts and the sound of someone’s grandmother shuffling past a 16th-century facade. On the other, you’ve got the largest gambling economy on earth, a strip of casino mega-resorts that make Las Vegas look modest and slightly embarrassed. And they sit, somehow, side by side. It’s one of the strangest, most enjoyable mash-ups I’ve ever spent a weekend in.

Two days does it. One for the ghost of Portugal, one for the neon. Don’t blend them — let each be itself.

Start in the old town, on foot, because this half of Macau is best wandered and frankly a bit lost-in. Make for the Ruins of St Paul’s — the carved stone facade of a 17th-century church that burned down in 1835, now standing alone at the top of a grand stone staircase like a film set. It’s the symbol of the city and it’s genuinely haunting up close, all saints and skeletons carved into the front. Climb up, then poke into the little crypt and museum behind it.

Down the hill, Senado Square is the heart of old Macau — a wide cobbled plaza laid in a wavy black-and-white Portuguese pattern, ringed by pastel-painted colonial buildings. It’s busy, it’s a bit of a postcard, and it’s lovely anyway. From here the old lanes spider off and you should just follow your nose.

And your nose should lead you to a Portuguese egg tart (pastel de nata). This is non-negotiable. The custard’s caramelised black on top, the pastry shatters, it’s warm — and Macau does it better than Lisbon, fight me. The original Macau-style ones trace to Lord Stow’s over on Coloane, but you’ll find excellent ones all through the old town. Eat at least three over the day. I had… more than that.

Lunch is Macanese food, which is its own thing — the world’s oldest fusion cuisine, Portuguese-meets-Chinese-meets-Southeast-Asian, born from sailors and spice routes. Get Minchi (minced meat, soy, potato, a fried egg on top — comfort food, basically) and African chicken (grilled, in a coconut-peanut-chilli sauce). It tastes like nowhere else, because it is.

Afternoon, walk down to the A-Ma Temple, the oldest in Macau and the one the place is literally named after (Macau comes from “A-Ma-Gau,” the bay of A-Ma). It’s all incense smoke and coiled red spirals hanging from the ceiling, tucked into the hillside. Then the nearby Moorish Barracks and the genteel, candy-coloured Lilau Square area, which feels more Lisbon than China.

Today, the other Macau. Take a (free, see above) shuttle over to Cotai, the strip of reclaimed land where the giant resorts cluster, and just gawp for a bit. The Venetian has an indoor canal with actual gondolas and a painted-sky ceiling that never sets. The newer places have a Parisian half-scale Eiffel Tower, a London one with a Big Ben, an enormous golden figure-8 Ferris wheel through the middle of a building. It is gloriously, shamelessly over the top. You don’t have to gamble a cent to enjoy the sheer ridiculous spectacle of it — and honestly the people-watching is the best show in town.

If you do fancy a flutter, the table minimums are high here, this is serious money territory, so know that going in.

When the gloss gets too much (and it will), escape to Taipa Village, just behind the mega-resorts and a world away — narrow lanes, more pastel houses, little local restaurants and bakeries. The Rua do Cunha food street is wall-to-wall snacks: more egg tarts, pork chop buns, almond cookies, jerky samples shoved at you from every door. Have the pork chop bun (a slab of bone-in pork in a crusty roll, simple and brilliant) and call it lunch.

Spend the late afternoon back among the resorts for whatever show or spectacle is on — there’s usually some water or acrobatic extravaganza — or, my pick, head up the Macau Tower back on the peninsula for the view, and if you’re certifiable, the bungee jump off it (the world’s highest, allegedly; I watched, I did not jump, I have limits).

For two days, stay central on the Macau Peninsula, near Senado Square or the old town, so you can walk the historic half and shuttle out to Cotai. The casino resorts on Cotai are spectacular places to sleep if you want the full Vegas effect (and there are deals midweek), but they’re a bus ride from the old soul of the place.

Getting around: walk the old town, ride the free casino shuttles between districts, and use taxis or the light-rail metro for the rest. It’s small — you can genuinely cover both sides of Macau’s personality in 48 hours.

Macau shouldn’t work. A pocket of melancholy old Portugal and the loudest casino strip on earth, crammed onto a few square miles of southern China. But it does work, and the whiplash between the two is exactly what makes a couple of days here stick with you. Eat the tarts. Gawp at the gold. Don’t pick a side.

Is one day enough for Macau? You can rush it in a day from Hong Kong, but two lets you give old Macau a slow morning and the casino strip a proper evening without it all blurring into one sugar-and-neon haze. Stay the night if you can.

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