Taiwan trip Day 4

So, Duane is off to work and I'm off on my own for the day! First on the list is to do a walking tour of the Chiang Kai-shek memorial.  It is huge!  This is just one of the "gates" to the memorial - quite elaborate.

This is a theater that is used by different groups.  Workers were setting up for an event, which was a little distracting!

A man and his family were taking photos - and he asked me to take one of them all together.  I, of course, obliged - and asked him to do the same with my camera!  The umbrella is not for the rain, but for the sun!  I will probably mention several times over the next week how incredibly hot it is!  You can't see it in the photo, but sweat is dripping off me!

Lovely view of the grounds. 

Inside the bronze statue of the revered Generalissimo and an ornate ceiling.  Huge building, but that's about all there is inside.

View back towards an entrance from the top of the huge stairway.

The statue is guarded by two stoic guards.  They stand perfectly still on a wooden box for an hour and are relieved with great ceremony at the top of the hour.  Lucky me - I only had to wait 12 minutes for the "changing of the guard"

The yellow-vested volunteers got everyone out of the way for the new guardsmen.  They marched in in perfect unison.

Pictures were snapped by everyone in the crowd - again, someone offered to snap my photo...with the guardsmen in the background.

These three new guards make their way towards the statue and.....

the two original guards join them....eventually two new ones take their places for their exciting hour of standing still....and the other three march in perfect unison out of the building.   Seems a bit much for guarding a bronze statue in a country where EVERYONE seems to obey the rules.  But they all seemed to enjoy watching the spectacle!

View as I was walking away.  Quite a grand structure!

Next on my tour was a visit to the nearby Taipei Botanical Garden.

Just another pretty "green space" - but they did have an interesting  Lotus Pond - the plants were in various stages of life, some dying off, some flowering.

Really a beautiful flower - the bud is huge about the size of both your hands cupped.

Left over after the flowering stage is the seed pod - these were all over the pond and are a little "alien" looking!

Oh, and I have to share some of my food with you from my outings...this is my lunch from a sushi stand - in order clockwise from the top (as best as I can figure out...)  bite-size pieces - smoked octopus, small fish-roe (caviar), shrimp with Japanese sauce, large fish-roe/cucumber, smoked salmon, a triangle shaped seaweed rice, and an un-identified fish.  Over to the right is an additional sushi roll that was most-likely seaweed, but I'm not really sure what it was.  A cabbage salad rounded it out and a beer.  Total $6US.  It was all very good!

Taiwan trip Day 3

So, our "body clocks" have definitely not reset completely yet... we were wide awake at 5AM even though we'd only had 4 hours of sleep. Oh well, such is the plague of world travel, I suppose! We're staying at a very nice Westin hotel - but like a lot of Taipei - there is a mix of the new and the old. Here is our view from the window of our 8th story room.

Duane had one day to recuperate from the travel, so we spent a leisurely few hours doing a little bit of touring.  We got our "Easy Cards" - the Taipei metro/subway system passes.   It's incredibly inexpensive and convenient to travel this way.  About $1US takes you all the way across town.

First stop was to make sure he knew how to get over to the IBM office building he needed to go to.  He's been there before, but it had been several years.  The subway system was not complete at that point, so he'd never ridden the subway to it before.  

We joked about it when we set off walking - "wonder when we'll see the next 7-Eleven" - because they are literally on every street corner!  And not one minute later, there it was to prove us correct!

I wanted to go on and get started on some of the sights - and Duane got drug along for a few hours.

On the list was the Confucius Temple - we've been to a few of these in China - this one was similar and very nicely maintained.  It was apparently a school in recent times but is now just open to the public.

I love these street scenes.  Everything is so "bustling" and chaotic.  Scooters literally buzzing around everywhere, it seems.

We toured an area that was set up in 2010 for a Flora Expo - and there were remnants of the preparations.  These simple coleus caught my eye because they're just like the ones I grown most years.

And then I walked around to the back of this area and saw that they had planted an assortment that most of us would have at home in the US - the coleus, wandering Jew, periwinkle and some ferns that looked just like our Boston ferns.  Just thought it was cool....

And then we were hungry....

So we stopped by a nice looking place - I will tell you that Duane will NOT eat strange street food.  There was no way we could read the menu, but luckily, the waitress knew some English.   We didn't exactly know what we were getting into - but it turned out wonderfully!  The restaurant was what they call a "hot pot" restaurant.  This is sort of like The Melting Pot we have at home - except you have an actual gas fired grill to cook your food on.

They bring you raw meat and veggies on plates.  We got chicken and some seafood.  I was shocked when she brought a whole fish!  I have no idea what kind of fish they were.....

Anyway, you get the idea.  You dip the food in sauces and then place them on this very hot grill embeded in the table in front of you.  Good fun and your food is piping hot!  And no, I didn't manage to peel the shrimp with my chopsticks....

We were totally beat by 3pm....our bodies were saying "it's 3AM"!!!  Back to the subway for the short hop back to the hotel. 

Come with me to Taiwan Day 1 and 2

I'm saying this is "day 1 and day 2"....it's really just one great big travel day, but it encompasses 2 actual days. Whew, I'm tired just thinking about it!

Duane had a business trip to Taiwan, so of course I had to tag along!!

Every trip overseas starts at the airport - first flight was a short one to Detroit, so we were on a fairly small plane first.   (Sorry for the distortion, but these were taken thru the weird windows at the airport).

But the long leg was in a 747. All these trips we've taken I've never been on a 747. Duane has, but I was always on some Airbus or other plane.

 

Boy, I envy the people up in the business and first class sections! Since the trip was fairly last-minute, the plane was full and we didn't get very good seats. Oh well, such is life and we made the best of it. The plane's interior was actually brand new with nice inter-active screens for every seat. Here is a screen I often looked at during the flight - the moving map of where the plane is.

Note the upper right hand value....yep, that's 14 hours and 5 minutes....and that was just the flight from Detroit to Tokyo - we had another 3 hour "hop" into Taiwan.

You know "you're not in Kansas anymore" when the airport screens look like this!

They actually do a pretty good job of having most signs in English also.   Off to the hotel in a hire-car....about a 30  minute drive into downtown Taipei.  Boy, we were whipped! 

And let there be cake!!

My good buddy, Wayne Andrews, is turning 75 years young this week...some of his airplane buddies and his wonderful kids planned a surprise birthday celebration this Saturday at the airport. His kids arranged for BBQ to feed 120. And there had to be cake, of course.....so I volunteered. And it had to be a BIG cake! Here is the pan I used - next to a standard 8" cake pan.

In order to get the batter to cook evenly throughout such a wide cake, you need to put metal "nails" in the batter to spread the heat evenly.  (These nails are actually made to make "roses" out of icing)

This is a finished layer with the "nails" protruding...perfectly done throughout.

Now to ice the cake.  Much buttercreme frosting was made!!

I mean, A LOT of buttercreme!

I got a "starter" coating of icing on at home.  There an additional layer you'll see next. 

Then, it was off to the airport to finish the decorating.

Here I am assembling the cake - the upper layer is going to be a runway.  I used black creme food coloring to get the pavement coloring.

And there it is!  The plane is the closest I could find to Wayne's Sonex that he built himself a few years ago.

Now, on to the surprise! His wife and kids did a great job of getting him to the airport without him figuring it out! Many, many handshakes and hugs were doled out!

Here is the cake and some gifts. 

His son presenting artwork of Wayne's racing days. 

Then BBQ was consumed!

Here is a closeup of the artwork.  I didn't know Wayne in the 70's, but he was obviously a fixture on the race circuit then!

Wayne being silly with some of the equally silly gifts he was given!

And this exactly the postscript any baker likes to see!!!

Recent fortune from Chinese lunch cookie

So what do ya think? I think they are right!

We spent last weekend at the boat with friends Cecil and Carolyn.

We did our usual trip up to River Dunes for a nice lunch.

And had a great sail on the way back! Nice to have someone else do the sailing (so we can do the snoozing!!)

We did have just a little excitement on our return to Oriental. As I said, we had a great sail on the way back - so the engine was off for a couple of hours. As we approached Oriental, we had to crank the engine to get back into the marina. Something didn't sound right - a little investigation showed that we were not pumping the cooling water and the engine temperature was quickly rising. So, the guys deployed an anchor and got to work fixing the problem. This was the culprit - the impeller that pumps in the seawater to cool the engine. Luckily, we had a spare on board!

Working on the hot engine was not too comfy - but they got the job done. Here is what the new one looks like. Cranked the engine and everything was fine!

Asheville Visit

I went up to Asheville yesterday to visit with my sis who is vacationing this week from W. Va. I surprised Granny and Cordy with a visit on my way thru Hendersonville. Of course, I left the camera in the car, but they made me leave with lots of veggies out of their beautiful garden again. Here are some very yummy beets - I've already pickled them and they're in a container for lunch tomorrow.  (the rubber glove is 'cause I don't like my hands to be "beet red" after peeling them!!)

I stayed at Mom and Frank's for the evening - my sis and her family joined us for a nice relaxing meal and a little bit of swimming.....it stormed on and off and Mom made us get out of the pool!

Teresa's birthday was just a few weeks ago - so there were some pressie's that she hadn't opened. 

The next day, Teresa and I went over to Grandma's for coffee and visiting.  She's doing great at 96!! 

One final pic before I had to head home!!  (My head is really not that big - it's an optical illusion...haha).

New "do"

I know some of you have already seen me in my new "do"....

Oh well, I didn't get around to posting this right away.

Here's the photo I snapped in the parking lot before getting my hair cut - I had decided to give up on a "longer" look and go back in the direction that is easiest - short!

And here's the "after" - I'm pretty pleased with it - light as a feather - wash and go!