The Last 2 Weekends In Pictures

It's Sunday morning and typhoon Fanapi is causing a storm to rage outside our window.  Here is a satellite image of the typhoon, courtesy of
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/45000/45860/Fanapi_amo_2010260_lrg.jpg

So I need to do some grading and work, and it doesn't look like Myron and I will be heading outside today, but since I don't feel like working yet, I thought I would share some pictures of our last 2 weekends. 
Two weekends ago, we rented bikes and rode along the Love River.

We really enjoyed the ride- though it was drizzling a bit- it kept the temperature perfect.

The Love River was cleaned up in Kaohsiung for the 2009 World Games- that is also when they put in the bicycle stands for people to get around the city. 

We ended up finding an Outback Steakhouse- which had a real American brunch- with eggs and toasts and bacon- I had this wonderful French toast- Yum!  I never thought I would actually be so excited to find an Outback Steakhouse- but biking and brunch was a perfect way to spend a Sunday morning. 
Then last weekend we headed up to Taipei. 
We stayed at The Grand Hotel, which was just stunning- I guess even people who aren't staying here will come to get their picture taken in front of the hotel. 

 We really enjoyed our room and especially the balcony that we had that overlooked the city:

After we checked into our hotel, we went to one of the best restaurants that we have eaten at thus far- it is a famous dumpling restaurant called  Daitaifung and everything that we ate was delicious.  In Taiwan, one of their specialties is these dumplings that have soup inside of them.  This may or may not be correct but from what I have gathered- you are supposed to eat them with a soup spoon and use your chopsticks to poke a hole in them to let the soup out into your spoon, then you eat the whole bite.  Delicious! 

Amongst other things, I also fell in love with their dumplings that were stuffed with red bean paste for dessert- may sound weird but it was so delicious that I am still dreaming of it.  

We were traveling with colleagues that we work with: 

After we finished eating, we went to the National Palace museum which according to Lonely Planet, "is home to what could quite easily be termed the world's largest and finest collection of Chinese art".  I personally was most impressed by the walnut shell that was carved into the most intricate boat with  people inside of it.  How did they do that?  The picture to the left is of me standing outside of the museum.

Then we went to see Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall, which is surrounded by a lovely park.
 

After eating supper at a pizza place- what can I say- we crave Western food, we went to the Chinese Opera, which was quite an experience.  First of all, they let you watch the actors getting ready and putting their makeup on.  And then they let you try on the costumes as well:

Finally, you watch the Opera, which consists of very shrill singing to the background music of discordant instruments.  A Broadway experience it was not- though we did get to watch a troop of Chinese acrobats beforehand who were rather stunning- this one woman could spin a table around on her feet.  Anyway, overall, it was quite a bizarre time, but still fun- definitely memorable. 
 

Sunday morning, we headed home- excited to come back to visit Taipei again.