Touring, Day 2

It's day two of touring, and we started out the morning by going to the Jade and Flower Market, which happens only on the weekends in Taipei. Essentially, three parking lots located under the highway are taken over by various vendors. The first market we went to was the Jade Market, famous for (you guessed it!) jade and other jewelry.

Fion picked us up at 10, and then dropped us off while she went to pick up the car. (She told us to go shopping, and she'd find us. I was a little worried that the market was a bit big, but then realized that we do stand out a bit as Westerners! She found us without any problem. ) (JEC - It's hard to show the scale of the market via pictures. Heather and I guess maybe a football field's worth of vendors... sort of a Traders' World full of gemstones.)


Next, we went to the flower market. Unlike the Jade market, we really couldn't buy any souvenirs for us to take home, as bringing plants into a foreign country is generally not a good idea. But the flowers were amazing, especially the orchids. We saw a bunch of orchids for under US$5 -- some as cheap as $2 each!






For lunch, we got Dim Sum at this restaurant, and learned how to eat Shanghai dumplings. Basically (as best I understand it), these are dumplings that have soup broth in the actual dumpling, so when you bite into it, the broth will drip out. We first tried stuffing an entire one in our mouth to begin with... and ended up with slightly burned tongues. So, after careful observation of other diners, we found that if you bite into it with your soup spoon underneath the dumpling, you can eat without burning your mouth, and then slurp down the broth when you've finished with the dumpling. We may need a little more time to practice. Luckily, we've decided that this is also one of our favorite foods, so it's not such a big hardship!

Blogger is currently pasting in all pictures I import onto the top of the page, and then not letting me drag them down to the appropriate spot in the post, so I'm going to forego the requisite picture of Jeremy with his bubble tea for the day. Suffice to say that Fion pointed out to us that there is a "very famous, very good" bubble tea location a block and a half from the hotel and we've been there twice today. (JEC -- And, after careful observation on our second visit, I have determined a general recipe for making bubble tea, so I can attempt to recreate the confection after returning to the States. Now I just need to determine how they create those tapioca pearls...)