Naturally, there are a lot of cultural and historical things to see in Taipei, topping Drew's list of must-see on this trip was the
National Palace Museum. Every other time I've been here, usually during a weekday like this visit, it's been fairly light on people-traffic, so I was a bit bowled over to see the place packed to the gills with tour groups. It was kind of unpleasant being overtaken by one so that we were practically running from them and didn't get to see near as much as we wanted. I did, however, get to see the
jadeite cabbage for the first time. Interesting how the artist incorporated the flaws so that the jade seems perfect.
Wong PP bought some crow's nest fern for us for dinner.
One morning I took Drew to Hua Shan Market for dou jiang. We got up really early for this excursion, so the line was only as far as the door when we got there.
And in the evening we went to Wu Hua Ma ("five painted horses") for dinner. The girls filled up on their millet porridge,
and the ume/black date tea. I could drink that stuff forever myself.
AhPoh's Christmas present to the girls was a pair of dress shoes each (and stockings), so we made an after-dinner trip to Taipei's shoe district to make our selections. The thing about places like these, as compared to dept stores, is that they're willing to give you an extra discount on clearance shoes if, say, you buy three pairs at once.
The women kindly let Z and M try on all the shoes in the kids' section, while G and BB had their turns. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get the shoes we wanted for Z, a dark purple patent leather Mary Jane with a sparkly bow, they didn't have her size.
