Leopards, Leopards Everywhere!

The day after christmas, Steve and I slept in, met his friend Rebecca for lunch, and then got a 2 hour bus to Taipei. From the bus station, we walked through this huge underground mall to the subway station, where we got a train to our hostel.

What you see when exiting the subway station. 

Our hostel was the beautiful Leopard Garden, hidden behind a tall building, down an alley way, with a courtyard garden. It was absolutely covered in leopard print. I mean covered. It was very clean, and great price. We stayed in a small windowless room that managed to fit 8 beds in it by stacking them on top of each other like a cat scratching post tower thing. It was pretty sweet actually. And, even though it was just a mattress on a wooden floor, it was more comfortable than Steve's bed!

 The giant leopard couch in the main living room of the hostel. The ladder leads up to a loft area where there were mattresses.

 Past the living room, the white doors lead to 2 WCs and 2 shower rooms.

 The loft. Check out the leopard print flat screen TV.

 Steve is loving the leopard! Sneak appearance by mirror me! There was even a leopard print bicycle with the bicycles by the wall.

 My mattress, hidden behind my suitcase and that table. The other one was Steve's.

The view down the the floor from my mattress.

After dropping our stuff off and my impromptu photo shoot, we headed out to check out Taipei. We started with all the shops across the street from the subway station. There was a street performer doing yoyo tricks, and lots of people, lots of shops. Lots of branching off streets and alleys for me to get lost down.

 AKB48 cafe and shop! For those who don't know, AKB48 is an extremely popular girls group in Japan. Many of my students love them, and most ALTs love to hate them. I get their song "Heavy Rotation" stuck in my head. I introduced the music video to Steve in his apartment. It's pretty scandalous actually. So I was excited to go check out the cafe and shop. We looked at some of the fabulous merchandise I could buy, but in order to see the AKB48 museum you had to buy a drink from the cafe, and we just didn't care that much.

Then we decided to visit Taipei 101 and Shilin Night Market, the biggest night market in Taiwan. We didn't know where 101 was, but we found a picture in the subway station that listed a stop, so we got off there, then proceeded to walk many blocks in search of it. Finally, we saw it towering over the skyline and made our way to it.

 Those crazy scooter gangs, waiting for the light to turn. This isn't even that big of a group.

We found it! Only a few more blocks to go.

 We made it!

Steve is super impressed.

Taipei 101 was the world's tallest building until that crazy skyscraper in Dubai got built. However, it's LEED certified (ah, memories of my days with DR, reading all about green hotels...) so it's still the world's tallest Green building.  It's called the 101 because it has 101 floors above ground. It's also connected to a huge mall with lots of classy and expensive shops.

We ventured in, and payed our money to ride an extremely fast elevator up to the 89th floor. Sadly, due to the weather the observation deck was closed, so we couldn't go outside. The views were pretty amazing though. Steve came up with a great idea for a game, that I can't share in case someone steals it and he then blames me. But it was pretty smart and fit the touristy appeal perfectly.

 The screen in the elevator, showing us flying up the building. My ears were popping like whoa.

 For exorbitant amounts of money, you could purchase a souvenir photo of yourself hanging off the building. We found this picture and decided to make our own for free. and by we, and I mean I decided and Steve got forced into it.

 You know you're up high when other skyscrapers look small.

 This building had a rose on it's roof. Pretty sweet. 

 The giant damper ball thing. This is what makes the building able to withstand strong gusts of wind, hurricanes, and earthquakes. Check out the cute Taipei 101 mascot. They were everywhere, in all colors.

We got coupons for overpriced snacks. Apparently, beer floats are a popular item. Sounds disgusting to me. Also, the legal drinking age is 18. I didn't know that.

After riding back down the elevator, we found a free shuttle bus that took us back to the subway station. From there we rode the subway to the Shilin Night Market. It was huge and there were people everywhere! I got omiyage for people and of course drank more bubble tea. Mostly we took in the sights.

More night market crowds.

Around 11:30 we were pretty exhausted so we found the subway station (harder than it sounds) and caught what was probably one of the last trains back to the hostel. We made up our mattresses with the provided leopard print sheets, brushed our teeth, I befriended the person on the mattress next to me, who turned out to be Japanese, then crashed.

We got up at 9:15 and left the hostel, me to catch my flight back to Japan, Steve to meet up with a friend. We said goodbye at the subway station, where I got train to take me to the bus station. The day before Steve and I stopped by the bus station to see how it all worked, and were informed that buses leave for the airport every 13 minutes and take about half an hour to get there. So I thought I'd get to the airport in plenty of time. When I got to the bus station, I bought a ticket for the next bus available, which left at 10:30. It made me a little nervous that it cut into my 2 hour pre-fllight time, but figured it would be okay. The bus then took little detours all over Taipei to pick up more passengers before getting on a traffic infested highway. 1 hour and 30 minutes later we finally made it to the airport. I was flipping out to say the least. It was 12:05, and my plane was due to take off at 12:30. And I still had to get through security and customs. This was not good. I ran to the service counter to check in. The lady working told me I was rather late, as if I was unaware. I think she could tell I was about to cry, so she told me to wait a minute while she figured out what she could do. Luckily I packed my travel shampoo and conditioner, because it was too late to check my suitcase. Instead, I got a personal escort through security, where I got to skip ahead of a bunch of people and they barely checked my stuff, then escorted through customs, where Chinese was spoken for me and I was rushed through. I was walked directly to my gate and onto my plane, just in time for it to start taxiing about 8 minutes later. I think I was a bit of a mess, and dying of thirst of running through all that, and hungry, as I planned to grab some breakfast at the airport while waiting for my plane. However, I successfully made it back into Japan, got the hour long airport bus ride back to Osaka Station, where I spent 6 hours exploring the area around the station, and then caught my over night bus back to Matsue. I arrived in Matsue at 6:50 the next morning, got a taxi back to my apartment (that was a challenge, trying to explain the driver where I lived) and then crashed. My sleep schedules appears that it will never be the same.

But it was a pretty amazing trip.