Taiwan

We just got back from a weekend in Taipei and it was my favorite place we have been so far! I decided I love all things Taiwanese and Long Long was born there so it was fun to go back to her homeland. Plus, her friend went with us/hosted us and his brother is a famous Taiwanese movie star so he took us to all his favorite "hot spots." It was an amazing time!

This picture was specifically a posed shot (taken for the blog) as soon as we arrived in the airport. Long and Steph were good sports and the fact that we all wore purple was a coincidence.

Our hotel's beautiful tree put me in the Christmas spirit!

We put our bags down and hit the night food markets which is what Taiwan is known for. It's like thousands of booths with all this great food. Whoa! The food was so good! So so good! Picture the fair with no rides or rednecks and all food booths...that's what it was like.

This guy was my favorite and sort of tasted like a cajun fillet chicken biscuit from Bojangles without the biscuit. Lawdy, it was yummy!

There was beautiful fresh fruit everywhere but we opted for more unhealthy picks this night.

Here you can get a sense of how many booths were set up! Hundreds!

These were strawberries with a candy apple coating. Duh right? I was LOVING these!

An unfortunate misspelling of t-shirt....

Fish balls. They were surprisingly really good but maybe my palate is changing...

Devin (to no one's surprise) liked the fish balls.

My palate has NOT changed enough for me to try these guys....yowsers

Ok, this is not meant to be a picture of me...check out the girl's outfit in the background. Awesome. Pure awesomeness. I just love that she is all trended out but still sporting the face mask. As if her mom was like, "you can wear that outfit, but you have to wear your mask" and she actually obeyed her. Maybe teenagers in Taiwan are more obedient than I was but I would NOT have been caught dead sporting my furry knee high boots with a mask in high school...TSC

This was our movie star friend. We said he reminds us of Jackie Chan but I think that's because that's the only other Chinese movie star we know. He is the NICEST guy alive!!!

Y'all, the cabs had karaoke IN THEM! WHAT?!?!?!? Funnest thing ever. I wanted to just keep driving all over town. They call karaoke "K-TV" there and it's very popular. I think I was supposed to be Taiwanese. The back of our seats had the screens with the words.

All dressed up ready to go to dinner where we went to the best sushi restaurant I've ever been to. The guy on the very right was our wonderful host for the week. Such a great guide!

We went to K-TV that night as well. This is Nick who they tell us is like the Justin Timberlake of Taiwan. We didn't believe them really until we left the Karaoke place and saw the paparazzi outside and then saw him on the cover of a magazine at the airport. So, we got a free concert!

We enjoyed a very Taiwanese breakfast one morning of dumplings and rice soup with some Chinese pastries. Long was explaining what everything was to us here....

This is the guy that made them for us.....

Taipei Street

Scooters everywhere....

The last few pictures are famous temples of some sort. Long Long complains I don't listen to her enough when she explains the culture. "I don't really remember, I wasn't paying attention." I'm kidding, that is a movie quote from an old classic. :)