第三日

Another day, another chance to view Taipei through the rays of the early morning sun instead of being unconscious in bed! 6:30 this time, Lag is letting up slightly. PIC TIME.

Milkhouses – a bakery! Bought breakfast from here yes sir.

So after all of my touristy ogling, it was back to the hotel for a survival Mandarin class! I was not too excited about this initially, having taken a year of it already. But boy was my smug and snooty demeanor shattered when our teacher turned out to be the funnest guy! He had made a multi-page guide of common phrases that he illustrated with these adorable drawings and was just a really great teacher. I still knew most of the material, but that’ll learn me to make snap judgments about things! After the quickest 1/8th of a day it was lunchtime! We headed off in a big group but some lame butts wanted to hit up the 7-11 (or The Sev as we call it. We go there a lot) so me and some other cool people split off and went to a little sit-down place. We wanted authenticity, and what did we get? That and more!

There was no English menu and the waitress didn’t speak a word of it, so the ordering process mainly consisted of me saying “Well this one is Fragrant Fish Flower, does that sound good? Ok well this involves pork in some way, how about that?” Eventually we decided on Roulette-style pointing and hoped for the best. A risky business, but it turned out to be ~~awesome~~. Behold!

Delicious as it looks, naturally. Also if anyone knows what the dish on the bottom is let me know! After lunching adventure we met up at the campus to go to the National Palace Museum. And boy, was it ever a museum (I do not generally like museums). The crown jewel (sorry for the crappy picture no photography allowed!):

A cabbage made of jade. Yep. It sure did look like a cabbage! Although the interior wasn’t my thing, the gardens were really cool!

Reenacting the classic Chinese tale Lao-Tze sells or buys geese or something. A Chinese Literature expert I am not.
By the time we went back to the hotel it was around dinner time, so we took to the streets in great packs of ravenous white kids, scavenging amongst the night market stands until our eyes alit on the holy grail of all kitschy theme restaurants:

Oh ho! A humorous mistranslation in an Asian country? Say it ain't so. Well it's NOT!

The seats.

The food.

The dranks. All in toilets! Granted, the food was not as great as it could have been but it was in toilets so all was forgiven.

It was getting pretty late at that point so we headed to a little bar across from our hotel to meet up with some people from Georgia (THE COUNTRY) for some Taiwan Beer! Attn Parents and guardians: it is legal here, it was safe, all is well.