The playground is a Japanese chain called "Yu Kid's Island" and it was really nice, although a lot smaller than I expected. But, in true Japanese fashion, the space was used extremely well, so although there wasn't exactly room to run around, there were lots of things to do. Michael was SO happy and there was just the perfect number of children there. Enough that Michael had friends to play with, but not too many that he was fighting over things with them. I just sat at the counter and read a book while he played happily for over an hour and a half.
Here's Michael in the bouncing castle. There was never anyone else in there with him so he could run and bounce around as much as he wanted. A huge difference from the Farmers Market in Calgary where there are always a dozen kids in there at the same time!
Many of the attractions there incorporated movement. Here Michael is sitting on a kind of teeter totter, although there is no one on the other side and it just goes up and down by itself.
The middle section on the "ride" below one spun around slowly. Michael had a little difficulty jumping from the clear stationary part to the moving centre, but soon got the hang of it after watching a few other kids do it. It required a little momentum.
They also had this balloon room with large balloons and cross breezes that kept them in the air. Michael loved running around in there, but it was so hard to get a good picture of him. He always moved so fast that my pictures would be blurry. Finally, I realized that my camera was set to the portrait setting. Oops.
Before Michael left, they gave him a balloon sword, which he loved. I think they blew it up too much though, because it spontaneously popped during lunch. Michael was sad, but I was relieved that he wouldn't be hitting everyone in sight with it for the rest of the day.
The playground was in a "Geant" (French supermarket/department store chain), so we did a little shopping afterwards in the supermarket. It was so nice to be in a place with wide aisles and clean, swept floors. I needed to buy dish soap as I had just used the last little bit last night. May had given me a sports bottle with watered down soap in it that I had been using until now. Now, usually, what bothers me about shopping in Taiwan is that everything comes in such small packages. Like flour. It comes in these small bags that only hold about five cups of flour. Sugar, two cup bags. Breakfast cereal, the smallest boxes. But then sometimes, they'll reverse it. Like with salt, you can only buy big bags. Dish soap happened to be another exception. Here, you can only buy it in these huge one litre bottles, whereas in Canada (where I want to buy large bottles), there's a huge variety of small bottles and a smaller selection of larger bottles. Alas, no aromatherapy Palmolive here in any size. There's just regular and antibacterial. "Magic Amah" brand and the other Chinese no name brand. Well, May will be getting a lot of extra dish soap when I leave...
When we transferred buses on the way home, we must have just missed our bus (which only comes every 15-20 minutes on holidays and weekends) because we had about a twenty minute wait. It was drizzling slightly, and a stranger opened her umbrella and just came over to me and starting holding it over both of our heads. Now, that was really nice of her, but I'm not used to strange people being in my personal space when we're in open areas, so I was a little uncomfortable. Luckily, the rain let up after awhile, so I had an excuse to duck out. Note to self: always bring your own umbrella.
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