This was supposed to to be an easy day but it wasn't. At least I'm not writing this at midnight and making numerous spelling errors because I'm so tired.
There are two inevitable things in life--death and doing laundry. We started out the day going to the neighborhood landromat near the Star Beauty. The laundromat wasn't large but it had almost-new, high-efficiency machines that you don't have to add soap to. They even had an attendant on duty who helped us avoid disaster once.
Once the laundry was dry we changed hotels...again. This time it was back to the Ambience for two days that I reserved on Thursday through hotels.com. We have a Deluxe room this time and it's large and extremely pretty in a Japanese-minimalist design way and very comfortable. Okay, it doesn't have a pond in it but that's fine with us.
After we dropped our bags off at the Ambience, we headed for Taipei City Hall Discovery Center, several floors of displays about the city's past and present. Sally was particularly looking for information about the neighborhood she lived in when she was ten years old. She did find a picture of the canal that ran down the middle of the street near where she lived and some information on the history of the neighborhood.
We then found a very good coffeeshop on Zhongxiao Ave.and got some caffeine and sugar into our systems. I was very tired and needed calories.
Sally wanted to try to visit the Confucious Temple again so we went there in two steps. First, we took the Metro to Taipei Main (Train) Station and bought train tickets to Tainan for Tuesday. Then we got back on the metro riding north on the red line to Yuanshih where the Boan and Confucious Temples are.
We found the Confucious Temple pretty easily now that there weren't hundreds of Boan Temple marchers around. It's very different than the Buddhist and Taoist temples I've seen because there are beautiful grounds to wander in, something the other temples don't have (or need). We were just getting to the main hall when they announced that the temple was closing. Oh well.
We wandered over to the Boan temple a block away. There was still a steady stream of people coming in for worship and a small crowd was gathered across the street at the gate of what looks like the Boan Temple's community center. There was a group of young people inside the gate on an outdoor stage rehearsing a play that I think was going to be given today.
I had a better chance to look at the temple building itself today and it's very beautiful. Sally told me that the temple is a World Heritage site and a lot of outside money came in to restore it to it's current condition.
On the way back to the subway I stopped in a phone store and got a portable charger for my iPod (works for an iPhone in case anyone wants to buy me one). It cost $250NT which is about $7.50. I'm using my iPod as my watch so it's indispensable.
We took off and rode the subway to...the main train station. Sally bought train tickets to a small town in NE Taiwan where we'll get on a narrow gague railroad train and head into what used to be coal country. Apparently there are some Taylor family stories about an almost accident involving a coal cart. We're going there.
We took the subway east, again, to Fuxing Street. This is a fashionable shopping district that's new to us. We walked a bit north to a a Szechuan-style restaurant named Kiki that Jenny recommended. We got a sweet appetizer, a spicy pork and celery dish, and a salty dish (bitter melon and salty eggs). Yes, that meal cost ten times as much as buying stuff in the night market but it was delicious and a real meal.
We did a bit of guy shopping on the way back to the subway. I'd like to find some shirts to buy here since they're so much cheaper but the stores that we saw there were the equivalent of Abercrombie and Fitch.
We crossed Taipei twice today on the subway for about $5 each total.
We made it back to the Ambience early and I will try to get a good sleep tonight.
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