11:52pm, Hero House, Taipei
We heard a knock on our door ~midnight last night, and got up to find Wendy's mom, Irene, at the door. Their flight was later than we thought, and they just got in. We planned to get up at 7:30am tomorrow, and meet them for breakfast. It was good to know they arrived without any delays. The next morning we got up at 7:30am, fairly well rested, and headed down for breakfast. Wendy and I both had 2.5 plates of the buffet, which had some different dishes today. The pork with cabbage, and chicken with seaweed were particularly enjoyable. I also brought down some of my oat blend cereal to mix with hot water and soy milk.
One of my plates at the breakfast buffet, along with oat cereal w/ soy milk...
Then we decided on plans for the day, First stop was a visit to Irene's grandmother, who moved to Taiwan from China. The cemetery was on a scenic hill at the edge of town, and we hired a taxi for over an hour as we figured out how to find the location. The cemetery was like a mini village on the hill. Each grave had a patio with a small fireplace to burn offerings. Irene bought some incense and token money to burn in the fireplace. The taxi ride gave us a chance to see some of the area, instead of the underground MRT.
A look from Irene's grandmother's grave...
Some paper "money" was burned as an offering, which is a Buddhist tradition...
From the cemetery, we rode the taxi to the National Palace Museum. Impressively, the hour+ long taxi excursion only cost ~$20US. I was pretty clueless to the conversations going on in the car. This would be the case most of the day, and no doubt the rest of the trip, as English is not widely used here.
The museum wouldn't allow cameras or backpacks, so I had to check my pack, which had ~$4k in camera/laptop gear. My pack was so heavy, they had me walk behind the counter to put it in and out of the cubby. The museum had Chinese artifacts from the past 4,000 years: bronze era (oldest), scrolls, ceramics, jade, and curio boxes. We had tea and cakes at the cafe on the top floor before checking out the gardens outside.
Looking back across the courtyard...
We took a tea break on the top floor of the museum (where cameras are allowed). Afterwards, we explored the gardens...
Some cool trees and birds in the garden...
Some black swans, and a funky blue bird...
The garden area was pretty small, and didn't take long to explore...
Then we took a taxi across town (Taipei is HUGE!) to a recommended dumpling restaurant and had a big lunch. The waitress said we ordered too much, so we dropped an item, however, she didn't know the eating capacity of 3 Changs and a Tracz, so we had to order one more plate after our initial order.
We walked around the neighborhood, where Betsy bought a bubble tea (cheap here!), and I bought an egg tart. We also bought a simcard for our cell phone, which took a good 30+ min for them to explain, config, and exercise the transaction, after which we were hungry enough to eat a egg & scallion pancake off a street vendor (yummy). Still haven't found a source for wi-fi yet.
Taiwan locals are very helpful. We've been asking for info and directions a bit (ok, not me, but the rest of us that speak Chinese), and they are always accommodating. We found out where the daily festival of lights show for Chinese New Year was, and took a bus to the memorial hall, where dozens of large paper lantern figures glowed in the darkness. Taiwan 101 made for a scenic backdrop. It's the year of the rabbit, so all the displays had rabbit themes. I kept expecting to see an Alice In Wonderland theme, and sure enough, I found it (complete with white rabbit).
An Alice in Wonderland light display!
We watched a ~5 minute light show with brief fireworks and lasers depicting figures of rabbits against a wall of water. I played around with my camera.
Then we took the MRT to the night market, which happened to be near Irene's childhood home. After a long walk, we arrived at her old apartment building, and then continued onto the crowded night market for dinner. It started to drizzle lightly, forcing out our umbrellas. We got bubble tea (had my first, and just 35NT for a huge serving). Then we stopped at half a dozen venders to try some BBQ fish cake and chicken, dumplings, a new kind of fruit I hadn't seen before, beef noodle soup, and lamb kebabs. It was hit or miss, but fun to try lots of stuff.
Night markets in Taiwan are very fun and popular, and a great way to try a variety of food for cheap...
A taxi returned us to our hotel, for the same price it would have cost 4 of us to take the subway. Now we're planning what to do tomorrow. Hopefully the weather will continue to improve.
I've included some addition stylish B&W pics Betsy took today, for your enjoyment. :-)
