with love

Taiwan! What a trip! For Memorial Day this year we decided to explore Taipei, Taiwan with some of our friends. We crammed our schedule completely full with shopping, eating, night markets, hiking, more eating, soaking in natural hot spring and sightseeing. We stayed in a cozy little apartment with some of our dear friends, Scott and Shannon. More of our favorites, Kayla, Audrey and K's sister-in-law Katie stayed just across the hall. Our neighborhood was seriously bustling. I've never seen so many scooters in one place. You have to be really careful while walking and aware that sidewalks are often mistaken as roads!

We started off by checking out Taipei 101. It's the second tallest building in the world and is home to lots and lots of high end stores. J was absolutely thrilled to get to visit the watch shops there. He was even given catalogs from designers that luxury watch aficionados everywhere would be jealous of.

Another awesome excursion was riding the Maokong gondola. We took glass floored Hello Kitty gondolas up to the mountaintop tea houses. The view was gorgeous! We had fun learning the proper way to brew and drink the local black tea.

I don't want to deprive you all of the culinary adventure that was Taipei. Here are a few pictures of local cuisine... (let me just say...you're lucky you can't smell it)

I will say, these mile high ice cream cones did look delicious!

7-Elevens offered some interesting choices.

We all got a good laugh when Jacob asked the ladies what kind of animal these brains came from. We're still not sure.

This dumpling restaurant, Din Tai Fung, was named by the New York Times as one of the top 10 best restaurants in the world. Those wontons on the right were seriously amazing.

In case you can't tell, he's slicing open raw squid and grilling it up. Notice his Hello Kitty glasses?

One evening we relaxed in the hot spring area of Beitou. Since there were 6 adults in our group we were able to share a private room with a huge tatami area and our own bath with spring water pumped right in. It was exactly what we needed to relax and refuel for another night market outing!

I saved my favorite part for last... Taroko Gorge was completely breathtaking. We took a train 3 hours southeast, hopped in a taxi, and drove/hiked around for about 7 hours. The waterfalls, marble cliffs, and green forest were incredible. At one point we hiked to the Water Curtain Cave where we put on ponchos and literally walked through a tunnel with curtains of water cascading through. Unfortunately, it was too dark for our pictures to turn out.