Eliza & Justin Abroad: June 2012

Bike/ pedestrian bridge over Xindian river.

Start of our Sunday afternoon bike ride

Here I am on my $1/hr rental bike smiling away

Despite the gloomy rain clouds, it stayed dry for awhile

Half way point. Justin made me bike up this ramp to see this view. Nice, but man my legs were burning.
But I'm still smiling :-)

The clouds are threatening....

Some local kite fliers doing so tricks.

A sad lonely toy plane abandoned on the river :-(
Somewhere along this path the Xindian river flows into the Dahan river

A flock of pigeons

Sunday must be baseball day. We must of past 8 to 10 games going on.
We were looking for our friend Ali (who plays on a team) with no luck.

We decided to take a break & get a refreshing bubble tea. On this street they were selling anything you can image dried.
Fruit, mushrooms and of course all kinds of sea creatures.

We biked all the way to Dadaocheng Wharf

Time to bike back.
20km and still smiling.

The bike path along the river was so nice and well taken care of.

I was able to grab the camera & take this beaut of a picture of Justin.

Almost back to where started & it started pouring rain

The rain lasted about 20 minutes but we were soaked

Back to where we started 40+ km later.
Man, my butt was sore.
All in all though it was a great afternoon with my husband

Justin: It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon and we'd been meaning to see Promethius (movie) with Johan for a while so we'd set it up to see a matinee together in Ximending. It's a popular area that I'd surprisingly never really explored. I'd been there once to set up a Mohzy shop display, but it was early in the morning and everything was closed...

The matinee wasn't until the afternoon so Eliza and I ventured out into the city around lunch. First stop: Longshan Temple!

Captions by Eliza

Saturday afternoon we thought we'd explore a little before we went to the movies.
This is Longshan Temple

It was busy but Justin said it gets busier at night because of the night market
Justin decided to protect this man's identity

Lots of incense smoke and bowing

Don't eat the food!!! Spirits only.

I was trying to figure out what those balls were. They looked neat in the arrangement

The air was thick with the smell of incense

This is the outside of the Longshan Temple

Alright, Longshan hadn't taken all that long to check out, and after walking around for an hour trying to find something not too "traditional asian food" we found a tiny pot-sticker restaurant to eat for lunch. I think the place was too dodgy for Eliza so she only ate 1 pot-sticker and I ate the remaining veg, kimchi, and pork dumplings along with a hot & sour soup.

Longshan is within a 15 minute walk from the Ximending area so we ventured off that way to meet up with Johan, Rebecca, Rachel, and Damien.

Cute little dog on the prowl

We were looking for a movie theatre. We thought it was here but it was a DVD rental store upstairs. It was nice & cool in this hallway, the air was blowing my skirt around. If you look under the stair there's a big wrinkle dog. See below for close up

I think he had the best resting spot in down. Cool and out of the way. Remember, "nice dogs don't block"! A Taiwanese saying we learned today

This is Ximending. A popular place for the young folks

lots of fun stores and foreigner friendly

We ventured into this building called Shinjuku Plaza. It was 7 floors of little trendy boutiques. As you can see this one had some crazy t-shirts. To see more go to www.hi0416.com

This is a tattoo that reminded Justin of tinker

Ximending. This place is similar to Robson/Granville street

Lunch time at this western style cafe. Justin & I shared a chicken sandwich and Raquel & Damien had the appetizer sample plate. I had the mint 7up.

We just finished watching Prometheus. We decided to walk around Ximending for a bit. So much busier at night. This spot really reminded Justin of the Shibuya District in Japan

I see why night markets are so popular in Asia. It's too hot out during the day.
Anyone watch Amazing race? There was an episode from Taiwan. In the back you can see a big movie screen, this where one of the clues were. Ximending!!!