Shanghai'd

We started early, breakfast at the hotel, then out walking around this area. We are on the edge of the shopping district about 4 blocks from Taipei 101. We strolled through a vegetable/fruit/meat/tofu/beans market then circumnavigated the Tower. Taipei 101 is at least 80 stories taller than all the other buildings around. Even with that contrast, our idea of big buildings is so skewed from 2 years in Shanghai that we felt it wasn't such a spectacle. We wanted to go up, but that doesn't start until 10. It was 8:30, and the streets were essentially empty (way different from Shanghai, which gets up to Taichee and construction at 5:30). We went on to explore a little park with 2 temples in it. There are temples everywhere here!

We then took the subway & a bus to Yangming Mountain - a big national park inside Taipei city limits. We climbed to the 1120m 7 stars peak (pinyinized as cisingfeng in Taiwan where we would expect qixingfeng on the mainland - the characters are different too, but it's all said the same, so confusing!). It was a gorgeous hike through thick vegetation until the last 50m or so which were in an open grassy hilly peak. It was also the butterfly festival that day and the flowers were covered with a thick layer of all kinds of butterflies, from small to big. We headed down the back of the mountain towards the bus stop, while a group of school kids tried to guess where we were from by shouting out "Hello!" in as many languages as they could think of: "Hello! NiHao! Bonjour! Sawadeeka!" That last one is Thai, and I can't really believe they thought were were from Thailand, but I guess the others didn't work, and they were desperate!

After the hike we were soaked from the rainforest like humidity there, and stopped in for some lunch and to dry off a bit. Tim ordered the stinky tofu over noodles (when in Taipei...), which really wasn't that gross, but it was the last time we ordered that.

We then headed over to the Gu Gong, or national palace museum, which is noted for having the best of China's national treasures, as the nationalists took them out of China when they left in the early 1900s, and they were not destroyed in the Cultural Revolution. The item on prime display was a jadeite carving of a cabbage with a cicada on it, which somehow had some sexual innuendo. The rest of the museum was definitely better than museums in China, but still a museum. We left as they were closing the doors and headed back to the hotel for a change of clothes and a (brief) sit-down. The air conditioning at the museum had turned my soaked t-shirt into a block of ice!

We headed out for dinner at the night market (see Tim's xiaochi post). Unfortunately, it was in a different spot that was indicated on our tourist map, so we walked around for an hour until we hit the undeniable scent of stinky tofu and knew we were there. We browsed the street carts and stands before deciding on a Taiwanese burrito (pickled veg, bean sprouts and tofu in a wrap), that scary deep fried meat thing, a sugary peanut smoothie and a fresh squeezed grapefruit juice. We jumped back on the subway (probably our 6th ride that day) and headed for the hotel.

After this crazy day in Taipei, we crashed in bed around 10:30 pm and fell asleep so deeply and soundly that we didn't even notice the 6.0 earthquake that rocked Taipei at 11pm that night.

Taipei in a day, Tim and Laurel style. Good day.