Day 6 (3/1/07) - Shopping day then TPE --> SIN

It rained this morning, and it was not a mere drizzle. it was the sort of rain that u must hold umbrella. actually we were really lucky, out of so many days we were here, it only rained on two days, the first was the day when we were at National Palace museum, but it was quite a light drizzle, and then today. if it had rained yesterday or day before, it would have spoiled our trip to YMS and to Jiufen. i finally got to eat mian xian in Taipei! i have been looking around for the famous Ah Zong Mian xian in XMD, but din see it anywhere, although i did see one in Shilin night market on the first night. in the end i settled for slice fish mian xian, which did satisfy my craving.

As we probably only had time to go and shop at one place, we decided to go to the Zhong Xiao Fuxing Station area as we saw an Espirit there that day we were there. the Espirit was three storeys high. actually we noticed that a lot of the shops occupy a few levels, it's sth like instead of occupying space in a 'linear' manner, they occupy space in a 'vertical' manner. i saw a Watsons which was three storeys high, KFC which was 3 storeys high and a Macdonald's which was 4 storeys high during my stay in Taipei. Anyway, there were quite a lot of cheap buys on the 3rd storey of Espirit. we managed to get some pretty nice long sleeved T-shirts at rather cheap prices. later we went over to the 2nd sogo (NOT the one at exit 2, it's either exit 3 or 4) where we continued shoppin for a while before we made our way back to the hotel. on our way back we walked past Ximending and we realized that this is actually the only time other than the first day when we actually walked thru XMD in the daytime. there are actually quite a lot of interesting shops selling nice shoes, bags but no more chance to look already. in fact after reading and hearing so many things abt XMD we only realized now that we din actually explore XMD properly and this place was so close to our hotel. such is the irony of life - the closer sth is to u, the more likely u are to overlook it. haha.

It has been a long time since the family went on a holiday trip together and it was really quite fun on the whole. at least i am sure if i had gone with frens, it's likely that we may not have gone YMS or National Palace museum and we would have spent a lot more time shopping. that's the diff between gg with frens and family - the sort of places u visit will tend to be different. although i have always been indifferent towards hiking - as in i dun dislike it but i dun pay special attention to it either - i found the day at YMS to be quite an eye opener and it was more interesting than i expected. Of course when u travel in a big group there are bound to be disagreements, slight misunderstandings, but between family members we dun take such things to heart for long. so travelling with family is always a new experience in itself ;)

My regrets... din shop enough, din buy enough things and din eat enough. actually even their food courts are quite interesting, they like to sell things in set meals. oh and i should have bought more Taiyang bing for myself, esp the one with many different flavours. maybe next time?