It was our last morning in Taipei. We were a bit sad to go and not just because we had a 8 hour 20 minute China Airlines flight ahead of us. Taipei surprised us as with its varied culture, tasty cuisine and relatively baby-friendly city. Of course, we were extremely fortunate to have Allan and Susan as our hosts who helped navigate our outings, choose the restaurants, and speak the language for us. The few times we went out by ourselves, we managed with a lot of pointing (most menus have pictures) and gesturing. I realized that cab drivers were more likely to understand the word "okay" than "yes" which came in handy and not surprisingly, Geoff started recognizing certain Chinese characters during our trip. We were certainly glad we came to Taipei, knowing that as much as we packed into our week trip, there was still much to be explored. We never had a chance to take some day trip to the north coast like Yeliu which looked mystical with its sandstone formations, and we never made it to the National Palace Museum - not too surprising since it wasn't until we moved to Paris that we finally went to the Louvre.
For our last half day in Taipei, we (of course) chose to get breakfast at Yungho Soybean Milk & Porridge King. Allan and Susan met us there, and Susan (who loves peanuts) introduced us to two new dishes there - peanut soup and a sticky rice wrapped around mashed peanuts.
Before we headed to the airport, we decided to take a quick trip back to Wistaria Teahouse to buy a tea set, complete with the pot, cups, bowls and wooden spoon. We got back just in time to get our bags into our car service back to the airport.
The flight which left at around 3 pm essentially was an overnight flight since it arrived in Hawaii 6 am local time (although in Taipei that's midnight). Since we were crossing back over the dateline, it would be Thursday morning again when we arrived in Honolulu. The flight was fairly uneventful, except for one bit of rough turbulence about 30 minutes prior to landing that had me regretting deeply the decision to fly China Airlines. But it ended well, and the passenger behind us commented on our way leaving the plane how "easy" Mirabelle is. It has been remarkable, and I say this with three days of travel behind us and one day of travel left. I'm not sure if it's the preparations, the presents, the pacifier, or just the fact that Mirabelle really likes Lady and The Tramp. But overall, my fears have not at all been realized. We have all slept well, ate well and traveled well. And I think when we're back home, we'll be planning our next adventure.
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