Never too tired to shop

Oops. After our weekend market visit we just laid down for a minute to get that nap we missed this morning, and now it is 9:00 at night! Even J went to sleep this time, after an apple and an Arthur DVD. He is going to be up at 1:00 A.M.

We haven’t bothered to unpack much as we’re heading out again tomorrow. We signed up for an overnight tour to Sun Moon Lake. It’ll be one of those hop-on-hop-off bus tours, but since we don’t know anything much about Taiwan, it will all be new and interesting to us.

The market was bustling. It is under a freeway overpass, next door to huge Da’an Park. Stretches for blocks. There are three sections: misc. crafts, plants, and the jade market. We made it through the first two before needing lunch, beef noodles and dumplings at a tiny store where J bounced off the walls and knocked over stools. Great dumplings though, and the noodle bowls were vast.

My favorite section for looking is the plant area because of all the bamboo, twisted into multitudes of shapes and wrapped with red ribbons. Mei-Ru says that because bamboo are always growing higher and higher in those little sections, they symbolize good fortune in achieving things so people like to give them as gifts. The plant area was also welcome today because there were huge misters in the ceiling, spraying down cool upon us.

My favorite section for buying is the craft area because there is just about every possible souvenir that a person could want to poke at and wonder what they’d do with it when they got it home. Buying little carved zodiac animals is inevitable, though I managed to not do it yet. Did get a picture that I wanted the man paint and two aromatic wooden wall pictures though. Lots of pent up tourist shopping inside me.

Afterwards we were too tired to do more than come back and take what turned into six hour naps. Oops again. Now we’re not sure what to do. Wake J and wander? Would he ever go back to sleep? Leave him asleep and we all get up at 1:00? Either way we’re screwed!

The view from our hotel room window.

Sorry this blog is so sleep obsessed. We'll move on to D news soon, I promise!

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Added later: We wandered out to walk about a bit, but there isn’t much open or going on in our neighborhood at 10:30 at night. So we came back to order room service. Sort of a mini-fiasco, typical of us. First, we couldn’t get into our room, because both Roni and I forgot to take the room key with us when we left. (We’re a little groggy.) So J and I headed to Mom’s room to wait, while Roni got the key. Since we were there, we called room service from her room, but wanted it delivered to our room. This caused everyone great confusion, with Roni just saying the same thing over and over as I hissed, “Be nice!” in his ear. Eventually they hung up, so we went back to our room to try again, where a very sweet lady showed up at our door to take our order just as Roni was starting again on the phone. This is a very friendly hotel, and I’m sorry that we’re such difficult guests with our padded bed and chocolate sundae demands.

Aside about the beds. The last time we were here the beds were basically plywood on wires, wrapped in a thin layer of quilting. We saw some on the street in the middle of being constructed and really, that is fairly accurate. So I asked Tien if she could request Western style beds when she made our reservation, if they were available. I’d heard that some hotels have rooms with different types of beds. Soon after we got in, during one of our less successful nap times, they arrived with mattress toppers to add 3-4 inches of padding. So much better!

Still sleep obsessive topics . . . tomorrow more tourism posting.