Jammed packed Taipei

 Today was our last full day in Taiwan, so we filled the whole day with things we had missed the first day. Aaron had a talk in the middle of the day so we couldn't go all out. We started off at the Miniatures museum, which proved to be very fun, much like the one in Lyon. They had lots of tin toys on display as well as the really cool miniatures. I think of it as house hunting or picking different types of interior decorating.

 Look at this lovely Manhattan apartment. I'm sure everyone in NYC lives like this.....not!

 The boys both went nuts over the Lego's exhibit at the end. Geeking out, majorly. Aaron especially liked a model that had a wagon full of sacrificial heads.

 We stopped at a bakery for snack and Aaron LOVED this peanut cream bread, describing it as "what you want all bread to taste like." To me, it's sweet and creamy so no, I wouldn't want ALL bread to taste like that....it was like whipped cream peanut butter inside a dinner roll. Nevertheless, it was delicious.

 We stopped very shortly in a paper museum. Snooze fest. They asked if we wanted to make paper...no thanks, but we did see the area where it's made. We also learned about different types of paper fibers and how long they are when magnified.

 We also stopped by the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial. Gorgeous. As the founder of the country, he has a large temple and 2 opera houses. I overheard an English tour guide say that only internationally renown performers are allowed to perform here.....sad face.

 Here's the whole monument. It's a sitting statue of the man himself and he's flanked by two soldiers with guns. Just like the English guards, they weren't smiling...

 The ceiling was pretty bad ass. Had to do an aerial shot.

 Here's the monument from afar. Look how massive the threshold is! There are 87 steps here, one year for every year of Chiang Kai-Shek's life.

 The boys were also feeling thirsty and gutsy so they bought strange drinks from a vending machine; Alex bought 'peanut milk soup' and Aaron bought 'asparagus drink' both of which had their pluses and minuses. We also stopped in the Peace park and sat in a bogota for a couple of minutes to calm ourselves.

 Lunch was at a Michelin star restaurant in a food court. We got their famous soup dumplings. Yummy. Since we hadn't done it yet, we also got shaved ice. And whoa, they were huge mountains of ice and weird crap. Aaron bought a red bean mountain as well as one with tapioca balls all over it. It was not the easiest thing to eat.

 Alex also bought some very expensive macaroons, all weird flavors. I sampled the prawn one and decided to stop after that. I'd prefer if my memories of macaroons are all happy ones.

 Aaron went to his talk so Alex and I returned to the hotel, but not before stopping across the street to the giant crab restaurant, where we both got to hold the massive crabs!

 It's bigger than my head, and since I'm holding it away from my body you can't really tell how massive it is. The owner made sure to pick a really big one for us. I've never seen Alex a little scared of experience before....

 Our last major activity was going to the Taipei 101, the SECOND largest building in the world. It held the title to #1 until 2010. It still has the fastest elevator though. Fun times!

 It is really mind boggling how tall it is. You don't realize until you're up there. Since we were late, we didn't get to see it during the day. Oh well.

 The building is equipped with a damper, a large ball that will shift and move when the building is knocked with wind or earthquakes to counterbalance the structure. It looks small in this picture, but I thought it looked like a planet in a giant space diorama.

 The Taipei 101 is so massive that underneath it, you can't look up and really see the top.

 For dinner, we met the game developers that went to Aaron's talks. I really didn't eat much because the food was STRANGE. The worst part; stinky tofu! AAAAAHHHHHH it follows me. I couldn't eat anything while smelling it because I had to close my mouth to chew and breathe through my nose. I got around it by either drinking orange juice very slowly or rubbing hand sanitizer under my nose.