In many ways it feels like the blink of an eye, but to really transport our minds back to 25 years ago took a bit of an effort on our part. Even stranger was to think that we had celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary five years ago atop the world's tallest building (at that time), Taipei 101: now that time really has gone quickly! This time, hot on the heels of our European trip, we were glad that we'd decided to scuttle plans for a trip to Thailand to celebrate and decided instead to enjoy some home town specialtiies.
We took a personal day from school on Friday enabling us to drive over to Dahzi in the afternoon after work on Thursday last week. The Hotel Grand Victoria is a five star hotel that has morphed into being alongside all the glitz and glamour of the Neihu shopping malls, hotels, high-end apartments, restaurants and the Big Wheel that seems to be essential in any city worth anything these days! Not only is the accommodation first class, but it has recently hosted what is Taipei's first Michelin starred restaurant La Festa, which is closely affiliated with Italy's La Credenza.
Our room was decadently luxurious and featured Phillipe Starck decor along with a most magnificent bathroom featuring not only expanses of beautiful natural stone and superb fittings, but an amazing toilet that almost needed to have a licence to drive it, with all sorts of automatic lids and heating and various other options that I'll leave to your imagination! The restaurant was sublime and lived up to its reputation. We eschewed the ease of the chef's selected menu, partly because of the foie gras to which we're ideologically opposed, but still managed to cater a classic four course meal for ourselves along with a mouth watering, smooth Italian red. We were able to dine at leisure and were slightly surprised at the restaurant's popularity on a quiet Thursday night: it got fairly packed! The wait staff were suitably coiffed and preened a little, yet cleverly left us alone except when we gave the slightest signal that we needed something, whereupon they descended like an eager flock of seagulls on a hot piece of pasta.
After a wonderful relaxing night under what Cass coined "The Karsten quilt" named in honour of our super goose down quilt in Karsten's apartment in Berlin, we eventually made our way down to breakfast in the same restaurant about half an hour before they closed up. We again stuffed ourselves on an amazing spread of tasty, fresh produce and ordered our eggs and waffles individually. It was such a relaxing way to spend our anniversary and all the more thrilling to drive home and revel in the fact that all our colleagues were beavering away at work!
Since then, we've made up for our days of leisure, being thrust back into the fast lane of newly formed classes (for me) and the revving up of second semester curricula (for both of us). The weekends have been a welcome relief and we've let out a collective sigh that ends abruptly on Monday when it all starts over. Cass and I both had our respective Book Clubs this Friday and as usual, had starkly different experiences! I, along with our ten strong group of men, had the famous beer tappers at Beitou's "Big Brother" , the rustic wooden bar that miraculously survives out on the main road near Beitou station, while Cass dined on al dente vegetarian at the local, classy Mia Cucina with her half a dozen girlfriends. They were disappointed to be "kicked out" at a very early hour: apparently the restaurant has become so popular that a booking now only lasts for two hours in order to accommodate multiple sittings. She and a couple of others wandered around the adjacent SOGO department store for a while afterwards...a beauty of big city living where everything seems to be open at least till 11 p.m.
We went across to the cinema on Sunday to see the incredible "Zero Dark Thirty", which we've been meaning to catch for some time. Wow, what a cinematic experience this was. Even though incredibly different, it had the same tension filled, "edge-of-the-seat" rush as the recent movie Argo. Director Kathryn Bigelow certainly has this modern war genre nailed down fast: A+ from us! Another late lunch/early dinner at The Spice Shop was a relaxing end to another weekend.
I've neglected to update our reading for a while. Cass has finished numerous books and I have read two books about Auschwitz (in the lead up to our visit). Currently, Cass is reading The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes and I am reading (belatedly) our friend Barry Maitland's excellent latest Brock and Kolla adventure, Chelsea Mansions. Photos: a blast from the past (!), me with my first semester group of kids in support class, shots from our anniversary stay, one of Cass before we went to the pictures yesterday and a close up of Cassy's "new" ring. She had her big emerald cut diamond shored up on either side by some triangular cut diamonds in a technical marvel of engineering by Joe, her doting jeweller: It's quite something!
