Taipei Zoo, Taipei 101, and National Palace

Yesterday we started our day by taking the subway.  It was very easy to figure out and not a far walk from the hotel.  We went to the zoo first to beat the rain.  We, however, did not beat the heat.  The Taipei Zoo is home to two pandas!  It was the first time for me to see them.  They have a nice indoor exhibit and one bear actually woke up and walked around for a minute.  The koala bears, kangaroos, and hippos are at the zoo too, all animals that the Cincinnati Zoo does not have (the hippos will be there by the end of the summer).  They did not wake up for us.  The zoo lay out was great and we had a great time.  Chris took 140 pictures!!!  I thought it was a little excessive, but he still has to weed out the blurry ones, so he says.  He took lots of butterflies and giraffes.  We highly recommend the zoo, even though the travel books did not!

After the zoo we went to Taipei 101.  It is the second tallest building in the world, it was number one until this year.  It is home to tons of business and the most expensive mall in the world (that is my estimation).  It has Prada and all the red carpet designer names that I can not spell or pronounce.  We had a snack in the basement food court before heading up to the top.  Chris was more impressed as the engineer, but very pretty views from all directions.

We ate dinner back at our hotel.  Micah has been getting fussy around dinner time so we were not sure if it would work out.  He did pretty good and there was another baby, just as big and the same age so not a big deal if he made some noise.  Micah has been a real trooper going all over the city from morning to night so it is very understandable that he not want to be out anymore in the evening.

He has been only having five bottles instead of the six he was drinking at Hannah's Hope.  It is too difficult to wake him when he is sleeping and he doesn't want to eat when he wants to sleep.  However, dropping a bottle means that he is hungry very three hours instead of hour.

Today we went to the National Palace Museum first thing because the guest relations person said we would need a lot of time and that we should do the English tour, which is at 10:00 or 1:00.  We opted for the 10:00 tour.  The guide was very funny!  If you should go, go on Friday since it is the only day he volunteers.  He was very knowledgeable.  It is supposed to be only an hour, but he generously went one and half to get more in.  One of the famous displays is a jadeite cabbage.  Yes, cabbage with two grasshoppers on it!  Interesting story about two princesses too, but I will let you come and hear it for yourself.

We did not make it more than three hours before we began to fade from hunger and needing a break.  We headed back to the cafe by AIT for lunch:)

Once energized we went to the Handicaft Market.  It is one of the few places to buy Taiwanese items.  We ended up getting a set of tea, water, juice cups.  We thought about heading to the night market but we think Micah may have had enough for one day.  We will try to leave the hotel by 5:30am to head back to the States!!