Marcus again

Heather's going to catch up on the blog for Pei, but right now, she's a little worn out. We had a long but fun day, and it was rainy and wet, so she's taking a bit of a nap before we grab some dinner.

We had planned this morning to go to Taipei 101, the tallest building in the world (or at least, it is depending how you measure!). You can get a great view for miles around from the indoor observation deck on the 89th floor, or from the outdoor deck on the 91st floor. (There are, you guessed it, 101 floors in all.) However, we took a look from our hotel, and saw that this might not be the best day for viewing the view from 101 -- you can see the building looming over everything else, but the top floors, including the observation decks, were hidden in the clouds. So we thought we'd wait until another time to use the world's fastest elevator (84 floors in 37 seconds!).

What we did do today was go on a tour to the NorthEast coast of Taiwan, and to Chiufen Village. The NorthEast coast is very rugged, with stone beaches -- very little sand at all. The waves were running high today, and crashing on the shore. Both Heather and I took little spills as we walked out onto the rocks jutting into the North China Sea, and discovered that some of those rocks were very very slick.

Chiufen Village (by the way, also spelled Jioufan Village, just to make it interesting on the map) is the site of what was essentially a gold rush town in the early 1900s. The gold is long gone, but the village remains, apparently mostly as a tourist location. It is high on a mountain, up a VERY long and twisty road that made me think that even the roads in Pittsburgh are straight compared to this road. At the top, we went to see the local temple, and to wander through the many, many shops of food, clothes, souvenirs, and who knows what else. I had some sausage grilled right there, and also a sort of ice cream in which they put a scoop of what seemed pretty close to sherbet onto a sort of rice tortilla spread with peanuts, add in some parsley, and then roll it all up like a burrito. It took a little to get used to, but was actually pretty good.

Tomorrow will probably hold the Taipei 101 trip, even though the weather doesn't look a lot better. We'll also probably go out after my class is over to participate in the Lantern Festival -- the conclusion of the Chinese New Year celebrations.