Chinese New Year lived up to its reputation for miserable cold weather, although we both agree that it has been one of the most relaxing holidays we've ever had. The dreary conditions were just the right catalyst for guilt free sleep ins, pretty much total lack of exercise and just a little bit of excess in terms of eating and drinking!
Even though the rain and cold didn't relent for the week, until (surprise, surpise) late today, we did try to get out and about whenever we could. After my trips to the beach last Saturday and Monday, I'd pretty much given that up, so we planned to head downtown on Tuesday to check out the bright lights of Taipei East. Safely sequestered in a succession of gleaming warm trains hurtling beneath the city streets, after our underground changing and re-routing, we got a surprise when we emerged to see the rain had even intensified down here. Instead of heading further afield, we ducked into the first available building from the station, newly opened and lavish exterior suggesting something neat to spy inside.
Just as we expected, Hsin Yi's newest shopping building is even more plush and opulent than the last one. It seems that if you want customers to come in, it just has to be bigger and better! Inside, the use of space was decadent, the floor, walls, balustrades and ceiling adorned with marble, the cavernous space housing surprisingly tasteful displays of lanterns for Chinese New Year and various fountains and pools gurgling away in corners to keep the punters entertained. The usual mix of high end fashion and product boutiques were good for a window shop, but the B2 "Gourmet Food Court" was just that. We ate at "Fat Angelo's" where the wood fired pizzas looked good and our meals both made a pretty good attempt to emulate our yardstick restaurant, The Northern Star Cafe in Newcastle(they didn't make it!). The various other food outlets and speciality delis were pretty cool and one upmarket wine shop housed many bottles of Australian Petaluma and Henshkes along with the Penfolds range, which we were pretty impressed with.
Another day we took the car out to B&Q, as I'd threatened last week. It was a targeted choice, mainly because of its underground carpark. We wandered around, bought a few supplies, bits of hardware we'd needed for a while and marvelled at all the "product". We extricated ourselves from there just at the end of my shopping breaking point, which isn't very long, and then headed to SOGO to eat some Thai food for lunch (you guessed it: also an underground carpark!). It was packed and they were turning cars away, so we kept driving all the way to Beitou where we entered the tightest underground carpark I've ever seen, straight below the Royal Host. 5 levels of underground parking rabbit warren had me fearful for the car's duco and also any mild claustrophobia we may suffer from. Luckily, we escaped unscathed, had a great relaxing mid afternoon meal before setting the GPS to find "home". Cassy seemed overly worried that I'd crash the car as I was pointing out all the remarkable (!) features on the GPS instead of keeping my eyes on the busy greasy road, but once again, we made it unharmed!
We eventually got to our Thai meal last night after I'd spent some time over at Wal's place setting him up with his new iPod and some good downloading software. Cass had been out in the afternoon too, but she had braved the Taipei bus transit system to visit her old mate, Joe the Jeweller. Joe has been working on some earrings for Cass for a while and she took delivery of them. They are to celebrate a very special milestone in our relationship which occurs next Friday, so I'll write more about that next week. All I'll say is that it involves the number 30(!)
We had a great meal and Cass pulled the lucky red envelope from a plastic case full of them and won us $500NT off our next meal there. It was the top prize and the waitress was very excited for us, so much so that we thought she might have won a prize too. Back home again today, we had Wal around for the UFC beamed live from Sydney, then a break for a couple of hours before watching the Twenty20 game between Australia and the West Indies. It's been that sort of holiday: not even tempted to set foot outside!
As karma usually has it, the weather is set to be warmer and dryer starting tomorrow for our return to work. Photos: Virg'nMary helping Cass with her school work on the laptop, various shots of the opulent interiors downtown and shots of our eating experiences! There's also an example of the Taipei peculiarity of straightforward labeling: noone is any doubt as to what this building is!
Cassy is reading the unputdownable Barry Maitland's Dark Mirror and I'm still on $20 a Gallon.
