The World's Tallest Tower

This morning was kind of rainy, so after taking Michael to school, I decided to go clothes shopping. This is something that I never do at home, mostly out of a lack of interest in shopping. Jeremy was surprisingly well-behaved, except for wanting to be held while I was trying to look at pants in a mirror. I made a couple purchases and then we went home for a quiet afternoon.



After lunch, Jeremy napped, then we picked up Michael after school. We took a bus down XinYi Road to Taipei 101. It is the world's tallest completed tower, although the Dubai tower (under construction) surpassed it in height about a month ago. We walked around out front so Michael and Jeremy could look up and see how tall the tower is, from below. They also found some artwork to climb on.





We started in the basement at the food court. The boys looked at the plastified food at a couple of the restaurants. Then we bought some dinner at Jason's Marketplace. Unfortunately, they no longer sell the paninis that Trina and I used to enjoy. We ate in the foodcourt, then left our stroller in the parking lot (at the elevator) and went up a series of escalators. The boys really enjoyed that. I was astounded by the richness of the shopping and took the boys in a couple stores, just for laughs. I'm surprised they didn't seem to mind, but everyone here seems to love watching our boys. The mall contained De Beers, Versace, Mont Blanc, Kenzo, Dolce & Gabanna, Jean-Paul Gauthier, S. T. Dupont, and many, many more. We stopped at the toy store in the basement before picking up the stroller and going back up to the ticketing office for the observatory.

At the ticketing office, they asked us to lock up our bags, because we're not allowed to take food up. The lock boxes were free, and easy to use, but I was juggling two backpacks, two boys, tickets and a foreign language and in all the bustle I locked up the camera. So no photos this time. We took the world's fastest elevator from the fifth floor to the 91st floor in 45 seconds. My ears popped three times in succession. Michael and Jeremy didn't seem to mind.

The 91st floor is the outdoor observatory. It was daytime, but a little hazy. It was difficult for the boys to see (they're too short), so I lifted them up when we got to the observation stations. They have tall safety bars around the entire deck, but Jeremy can actually fit through, if he turns sideways. After I realised that, I decided to hold him back further. The next stop was the indoor observation deck, where we watch the city lights come on as it got dark out. That's not a great description, because actually I chased the two boys as they ran in different directions, climbing on benches and observation decks.

All in all, it was a fun time and we only got lost once, accidentally taking the stairs back up to the outdoor observation deck. There were many very helpful guards and service personnel and we made it back down only a few minutes late to meet Mommy at the Page One book store. I know that Michael really enjoyed it, because every time he sees it, he reminds us that we went up that tall, tall tower, called 101. Although he usually calls it 1-0-1-0-1-0-1-0-1, with the number of repetitions depending on how excited he is.