Pizza-ped

After having typed this entry as one big one for Sunday, I'm going to do you all a favor (thank me later) and divide it up into a bunch of sections. It was a MAMMOTH post and I hadn't even added all the pictures yet. This way you can read the sections that sound appealing and you won't be bored into a coma (that's not a guarantee) or have to devote an hour of your time to avoid losing your place and having to start again.

We started the day a bit late and thought we'd head to Starbucks and treat ourselves to a coffee. We walked the direction we thought it was from our hotel. Not so much. It wasn't long and the street ended entirely and we sheepishly had to turn around and head back the way we'd come. We ended up just picking a direction and walking. We didn't find the Starbucks, but we did find a beautiful Chinese temple, a Dunkin' Donuts (Steve suggested that we could do Friday night special Taiwan style one night - leave it to him!), several examples of the ever ubiquitous 7-11s, and a traditional street market. Unfortunately, we also found it to be raining at an ever increasing rate. We'd brought our rain jackets with us (and I have to give a shout out to Steve here because I wouldn't have brought them and I DIDN'T bring our umbrellas, so he was the man who saved the day), so we put them on and meandered through a nice little neighborhood. When we came out on the other side, we found a wonderful little bakery and stopped in. They had buns of every shape and size and cakes and cake rolls...cookies... YUMMM!!! We each grabbed a bun and went to pay. The cashier hadn't said a word the whole time and just pointed to the number on the cash register. It's not unusual to find people who don't speak English, so I didn't think much of it. When she gave me my change, I said Xie xie (thank you in Mandarin) and her whole face lit up in a smile. My guide book said that most Taiwanese will really respect any attempt to use Chinese and it surely appears that it's true. We saw these pizza hut mopeds on our walk and I couldn't resist taking a touristy shot of them.

We never did find the Starbucks and it went from misting when we left the hotel to a downright downpour at one point and then back to just light rain by the time we made it home.