Off to the sea

Family pictures, at the top of the page for my brother who has complained I write too much and include too few family shots. Here you are, Andy:

The boys spent a really long time in the bath today, and had a ball. D loved the water, and J has always been able to stay in the tub until his toes peeled. We gave them lots of bubbles and containers to pour water from, and they were delighted. They played separately for the most part, but with some tossing of the ball back and forth.

We wandered down the street and around the corner to order chops for both boys from a little shop that we pass frequently. They’ll be ready Monday. I still need to find a place to have D’s name written out on a wall hanging as we have for J, but if I recall we got his at a night market, so we’ll probably find someone there again.

After nap time – which worked this time! Joy! – we climbed into another van and headed off for the northeast coast, to see where the East China Sea meets the Pacific. The part we visited wasn’t beachy (a word?) but had lots of rocky outcroppings where the hills go down to meet the water. We stopped at a couple of scenic view points to look at the way the wind had carved patterns into the sand stone and lava, which were interesting, and drove by the Bay of Two Colors which may be geologically fascinating and was in fact two colors, but since one of them was brown and the other was sea green, it didn’t seem startling to me. Purple. I could have really been amazed with purple. J

Then we climbed up, up, up into the hills along one of those switchback roads that make you feel as if at any moment you come around a corner so tight that you’ll be behind yourself. Perched up on the hill is the town of Chiufen, sort of a Taiwanese Positano, a town of narrow alleys and steep steps that looks stacked on itself. Gorgeous views, and definitely a place to come back to and stay in a B&B so we could just lounge on a terrace sipping tea and looking out over the hills and sea. Which we could have done, in a more brief version, but since we were tourists with only an hour, we wandered down the main shopping street tasting interesting and unidentified foods and buying dragon puppets and smiling pig piggy banks.

Roni and I switched kids every five minutes as J decided he needed to be with the other parent, and with him in tow and hauling D, we slowly lost water weight.

Then back down innumerable steps to the air-conditioned van, back down the twisty road, past Chicken Cage Peak, and back to Taipei.

As we came back into the city, we saw people burning huge quantities in paper. Apparently, this is the only month on the Chinese calendar when the ghosts can come out of the underworld, so these people were burning ghost money for the ghosts to take back with them when they had to return so they would be able to buy things in the underworld.

Fruit and bread in the hotel room, and then everyone to bed.