Taiwan: Day 3, The Adventure Continues

Today after breakfast we went to the Carrefour. Future travellers to Taiwan, take note: Carrefour = Target. (Note I L-O-V-E Target and won't use the name of that other place b/c I hate them so much.) Anyway, if you get here and need ANYTHING...ask your hotel front desk people to write you a taxi card to the closest Carrefour and you're set! We were able to procure a $15 umbrella stroller, diapers for SLC, 4 varieties of surfboard crackers, a big jug of bottled water, and some PJ's for C. all in the same store. Seriously, the Carrefour rocks!!

We brought our loot back to the hotel and then went to Taipei 101 for lunch at McD's. Then we bought a couple of goodies from that previously mentioned yummy-looking pastry shop. Then back to the hotel to catch the 1:40 tour bus (van) for a tour of Taipei City. We went to The Martyrs' Shrine, the National Palace Museum, a traditional Taoist Temple, Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, and the Handicraft Center. We were with a German couple and a father & son from the US. This was a really good trip and we got to see a lot of neat stuff. (And before you ask, yes I have pictures and eventually I will download them but I haven't yet. Apologies all around...I know it's boring to just read and not see any pics...sorry.)

We got back to our hotel a little before 6 pm and finally hooked up with K & A who arrived late last night. They are here picking up their adorable little Leo! We all went to dinner at a TRADITIONAL Japanese Steakhouse. Very traditional. (QJ, take note!!!) I ATE WEIRD THINGS!!!! The first course comes out and it is a strange raw fish rolled around some sort of lobster mixed with mayonaise, a tiny tomato half with black caviar on top, and a piece of celery with large orange caviar on top. I tried it all. (My Mom is somewhere utterly freaking out as she reads this.) I will give C. much credit here as I think he ate all of his 2 caviar things...I just tasted them and couldn't go any further. The next course was onion soup and although it was more gravy-ish than soupy, I managed to eat a good bit of that. I think the prawns were next and since I LOVE prawns, that course didn't present any difficulties at all. There was also salad in there (before the prawns? I can't remember now...) and believe it or not I ate some of the salad. Well, I ate 3 raisins and a mandarin orange, but it counts, they were in the bowl with the salad and they are things I do not normally eat. Finally the steak is served and it was superb. Also, I ate whatever they served with the steak but none of us could really ever figure out what they were. They were tiny and sort of looked like cut-up water chestnuts but didn't taste like water chestnuts at all. So it's an even bigger deal that I ate a bunch of something that I haven't a clue what it was. I should add that I was eating all of this with chopsticks and actually doing a decent job of it, too. For dessert there was a teeny-tiny piece of cake accompanied by watermelon, honeydew, pineapple, and some other fruit that I'd never seen before - but I tried it! It didn't have a whole lot of flavor and the zillions of tiny seeds were sort of odd, but it was OK. We also had oolong tea which I drank, despite it's complete lack of sugar. (Hey, don't laugh, I'm fron the South where not adding sugar to tea is just....well, unheard of.)

Finally, after dinner we walked around Taipei 101 with K. & A. and then to TRU so they could get Leo some toys. On the way back we saw a couple of street performers and Katie and I gave one guy a little money and he wrote us a note. It was a lot cooler than it sounds but you'll have to wait and see the pictures.

What a great day! We experienced a lot of Taiwan and it's history today and then wrapped the day up by meeting a blogger buddy whom I've known through the ya.hoo boards and email for at least a year now. We both agree it's such a surreal feeling to finally be here and finally be mere days away from meeting our children. It's such a long, long time getting to this point...it's hard to believe it's actually happening.