Monday morning we woke up nice and early to catch a train ride up to Taipei and Toroko Gorge. Luckily mom packed us all a delicious breakfast of cinnamon rolls, frosting, and milk for the train station:
Some things never change.
The ride to Taipei was around 2 hours long and filled with the most beautiful and interesting scenery. Cities, mountains, shacks, fields, ocean, temples, and of course tetris rice paddies for days!
We finally arrived in Taipei and walked around the city a bit. First stop: the temple.
Then we walked to the Chiang Kai Shek memorial
We made it (literally) just in time to watch the changing of the guards ceremony, which reminded me a lot of the ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington.
Then we visited the one place that dad still recognized from his own mission 40 years ago: a little restaurant that he ate at as a young 19 year old missionary.
The food was super delicious and it was so fun to think of dad eating there at that same place as an elder! We stopped at the temple again for a quick potty and picture break
Then headed out in search of the jewel of Taipei: Bing!!!
Taiwanese shaved ice is called Bing and it is DELICIOUS. Just look at Fin's face when she can't reach it hahahahahahaha!
After we stuffed ourselves, we took a quick subway ride up to Taipei 101, the 5th (?) tallest building in the world.
Very impressive. We jumped back on the train and kept going north to:
Matt found heaven in the middle of the train station
And then we were shuttled off to our "hotels" for the night...
Kell and Jer were taxied off to some place else, and we got to stay here with mom and dad. Looks adorable right?? Not so much. Turns out that mom and dad had randomly found this guy that rents out his house and bicycles to tourists going to Toroko Gorge. Maybe it was the heat, or the mosquitoes, or that we couldn't get the air conditioning to work at first, or I was just tired... or the slippers we had to wear because no shoes were allowed in the house,
Or the strangely bizarre decor,
Or the bathroom that was OUTSIDE on the balcony and had a completely open shower so that the entire bathroom was soaked and dripping since humidity is 1000% in Taiwan and nothing is ever dry ever,
Or maybe it was all those things combined, but I was... less than thrilled at our accommodations. When we finally left to go pick up Kell and Jer, we found that they had been put in an "actual hotel," which they were complaining about as well until I begged them to switch rooms with us hahahahaha. In all reality, it wasn't that bad, I was just super grumpy. But a trip down to the local beach improved my mood immensely.
So beautiful!!! When it started to get dark, we walked back into town in search of dinner... And things might have gone back downhill a little again hahahaha. I think I first started to become concerned when I noticed that the rest of the town seemed to be completely deserted and all the other restaurants and shops were closing up for the night... at 7:30. I asked mom several times where we were going to eat since everything looked closed, and she reassured me that our place would be open. I wish it hadn't been.
Fakest smile award goes to: All of us except Cutterman, who seems to be the only one not hiding his true emotions about this... "restaurant."
Oh my sketchy. We were not sure what type of meat was on the noodles, we didn't know how long this food had been sitting in the display window, and we couldn't tell what was in the vegetables besides hundreds of tiny fish. Our saving grace was the rice, which was edible, but still tainted by the horror of the other dishes hahahaha. We ate as much as we dared and got the heck out of there. A few days later, Dad told us kids that Mom had finally admitted to him that the food at this place was not good, and added, "So you know it was REALLY bad, cause she never ever complains about the food here!" Complaining, justified. Or as Matt put it, "I'm gonna make fun of that place all I want, now that even your mom doesn't like it!"
To close out a wonderful evening, I tried for 20 minutes to take a shower, but the lovely people renting out the other rooms in the house must have been trying to shower at the same time too, because there was not a drop of warm water to be had and the water pressure was all over the place. I ended up splashing myself down as best I could and calling it a night.
We love... "adventures."
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