My Saturday (3/31)

I am going to write about my trip with French people. I know American and French people hate each other, which I find fairly entertaining. So, if you feel it bothers you too much just stop reading.

As I arrived at the Grand Forward Hotel, fairly early on Saturday morning, Bruno was outside the hotel waiting for me. He then invited me to have breakfast with him and his secretary. I decided eating another breakfast that morning wouldn't hurt. Soon after, Jimmy arrived and we hit the road. Our first destination was the National Palace Museum. Jimmy asked me to buy tickets first while he parked the car. It's my fourth time being there and the place changed a lot since my last visit. Not totally clear on where to go I mistakenly lead them to the wrong entrance.

The place is so enormous; we were only able to check out the ceramic, bronze and jade carvings. I was really impressed that my boss, Jimmy, looked at the artifacts in such detail. At the beginning I really enjoyed looking at all the different carvings, but soon I felt sleepy and lost interest. Although, it's good to know Bruno and his secretary, Eve, loved the show. At 2 pm we were still walking and talking in a nearby garden. Although the garden was quite beautiful, my stomach had been growling since one o'clock and we still haven't eaten lunch.

The trip highlight of the day was the restaurant in a hotel that Jimmy took us to for lunch! The hotel is called 椿園 chun yuan , located in 士林 Shi Lin area. Everyone was captivated by the restaurant's dream-like scenery. The restaurant was located in a lush forest at the base of YangMing Mountain. We ate too much and laughed too much. After lunch we walked up to Chun Yuan's tea house where we enjoyed afternoon tea. There, we took some pictures with some very funny people that happened to be dressed up like cartoon characters. We also talked about ghosts and some silly aspects of the Japanese lifestyle.

The above is already good enough for my day.

After tea, we went to enjoy Chun Yuan's hot springs. This was my first time in a hot springs with foreign women. Their hot springs looked similar to a swimming pools, the only difference was that everyone was naked. Even when women changed pools they walked in the open completely naked. I actually felt very comfortable and happy to have this new experience.

Story continued...
We then drove to the Grand Hotel to take a quick look inside. I accompanied Bruno and Eve to the downstairs of Grand Formosa Regent Taipei (晶華酒店) to find a good goodbye present for Eve, where the cheapest teapot costs NT$800. They felt NT$800.- for a teapot was too expensive, so we didn't take it. We then went to a Mazu temple in BanQiao that's the only thing left in their mind to do before leaving Taiwan. Afterwards, we went to 板橋後站 BanQiaoHou Zhan in search of a teapot. At BanQiao we found a nice looking teapot for only $140. In addition to finding the teapot, I also was able to get Bruno's watch fixed. After seeing The National Palace, eating lunch in a beautiful forest and searching for teapots in traditional markets we finished our amazing day in front of the Grand Forward Hotel and I showed them my cool motorcycle that they don't have. I was so glad that our plan came together and that everybody was happy.

The end!