Taipei Children's Recreation Centre

It was raining in the morning, so we called a cab to take Michael to school. I had the driver drop us off at our breakfast place (for chocolate toast). Of course, the rain turned torrential a minute before he dropped us off and it let up to just a mild rainfall a couple minutes after we got inside. Armed with chocolate toast and a ham and cheese sandwich, I took Michael to school. He insisted on holding the umbrella, but for it to be high enough to cover Jeremy and I, I held him to walk two blocks.

Jeremy and I took a bus home and decided to walk up the hill to our house. I have wanted to take a picture of the rubber trees that grow really big here to give my little house plant some inspiration. On our walk home, we found a really hairy, bright yellow catepillar. It turns out that Jeremy didn't want to be in the picture... I guess he doesn't like bugs as much as Michael, who is learning about bugs in school.



After lunch, we decided to go to the Children's Recreation Centre. That was a lot of fun. We used 25 tickets on rides (one ticket per person per ride), with easily the majority on the electric train. Jeremy couldn't ride all the rides, but he liked the train and the carousel and he laughed a lot on the spinning teacup. Michael said the teacup was "hilarious". Michael also really enjoyed the bumper cars. The first round we were alone, but then three other groups came in, so we rode again. That was a lot more fun and Trina said Jeremy found it really funny every time we bumped another car. We went on the carousel and Jeremy had so much fun, he didn't want to get off, so we moved up to the upper floor for a second ride. After we were done, we went through the maze, which Jeremy seemed very serious about, then played on the playgrounds. It started getting a little wet, so the last slides weren't very slippery.

Children's Recreation Centre

Click above for the album.

We took the train back to Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall, near our old apartment, and decided to look for some of our regular restaurants. Trina has talked about Bellini more than once, a Japanese place that does Italian pasta, so we tried that first. The sign was still there, but it was gone. Then we walked up and down a few side streets until we found our old 69NT (each dish the same price) and our old Thai restaurant. The 69NT one wasn't open (probably too early, at 5:00pm?), but the Thai one was. The owner took a picture of us in front.



When I asked if she was still the same owner as four years ago, she said she might vaguely remember Trina. They don't have the English menu that we made for them, but their food is as good as ever. It was 100NT per dish and, walking back to the main road after, we found that they've even opened an identical restaurant a few blocks away. On the way home, we stopped at the wooden toy store where there's a train set that Michael loves to play with. He played nicely with Jeremy, but it got late and we needed to go home.