I'm going back to grad school, and you're coming with me.
For dinner last night we had Peking Duck.
Guy has all the juicy pictures of the actual carving of the duck. You’ll have to wait on those. In the meanwhile, here are a bunch of fun family photos. The duck was delicious, but you know, everything we’ve eaten (and will eat, I suspect) has been. We even stopped yesterday afternoon at a street vendor for one of my favorite snacks. At the moment, the name evades me. But it’s a small pastry covered in sesame seeds, filled with I think, green onions and some other stuff. Guy took a bite and asked was it was made out of. You know what gives it that really savory, mouth-watering taste? Yep, it’s lard. Mmm.
You may be thinking that all we do here is eat. That’s kind of true. But just so you know, yesterday we took a long walk with Yen Ah Yi to Eslite, a 24 hour bookstore. I’d link to it so you can check it out, but the whole site is in Chinese. We got some postcards (expect yours soon) and a Taipei guidebook so we can learn more about the city, study the maps, etc. I’ve always taken Taipei for granted since I always have my family to show me around. But it’s nice to understand how the city works as well.
We had lunch in The Mall at Far Eastern Plaza. Far Eastern is the company where my aunt works. The plaza is made up of two 40-story towers, one that’s a fancy-pants hotel and another that’s an office building. We got to go up to the top floor and see an incredible view of Taipei. Guy has those photos as well. It was incredible to see Taipei 101 (the now-second tallest building in the world) compared with the rest of the city. You really just don’t realize how enormous it is until you see it from up high. Part of it is that the surrounding buildings aren’t that tall. But mostly, it’s just huge. It’s way taller than the Empire State and it looks about twice the size when viewed between the mountains and the rest of the city.
In the afternoon, I sat outside in the courtyard near my aunt’s condo and took in the amazing weather and read from our Taipei guidebook. We’re leaving here in about an hour to have an adventure with Tammy and Andy. Stay tuned to hear more!
