Din Tai Feng was a very pleasant antidote to all the week's worries on Saturday and we went along in the late afternoon, supposedly to avoid the lunch crowd and to miss the great Saturday hordes that line up from early evening. We did a pretty good job of the timing and we were whisked into a booth with a minimum of fuss. The food here is just sublime: it never disappoints and we often comment that it would be a huge hit in Australia. There is a branch in Sydney and I'd be interested to know business is: we reckon we're reasonably discerning diners and it certainly ticks all our boxes at a very good price.
The weather was again favourable to outdoor activity on Sunday, so I decided to brave the 1000 steps once again. I've had a long layoff because one of my knees flared up again from the up and down movement, so I've been using the treadmill at the school gym as an alternative. I've been setting it on maximum incline and walking as fast as is humanly possible without breaking into a jog. It gets the sweat flowing quite nicely and has been a good, alternative aerobic workout. Anyway, I managed to make it up and back without any major complications so I was pretty relieved. Cass did her river walk circuit at the same time, so before lunch we were all exercised, washed and feeling quite self satisfied!
The monkeys at the top of the steps and along the trail a bit are supposed to be at their most active at dawn and dusk, but today they gave me quite a fright. A whole extended family decided to break from the foliage just as I walked along the upper path and as luck would have it, there was no-one else around. Their bodies are huge and muscular and they are an intimidating sight. The family decided to amble across the path and leap into the trees opposite, but not before big daddy gave me the most awful teeth bared snarl and spit. I literally froze to the spot! When they were safely tree bound I snapped off a shot very tentatively, a half second from running for my life (or at least that is what it felt like at the time!!)
This afternoon we joined a very packed cinema auditorium to watch "The King's Speech". It's recent success at the Oscars guaranteed a large crowd, but this was amazing. We were in the biggest cinema and we were in the 4th row as every other seat was taken. The movie itself was a magnificent triumph for all concerned and although Colin Firth was superb, we couldn't help feeling a little sorry for Geoffrey Rush: surely he stole the show?!
Well, I'm a little ill motivated to write great screeds today, so perhaps mercifully for you the reader, I'll finish here. I've posted a short video and some photos of a most bizarre piece of Taipei street theatre I witnessed yesterday...your guess is as good as mine (especially the bashing of the backs with the cane)!! The other photos are the menacing shadow of two monkeys in a tree and the deceptively cute sign of same monkeys!