Our last night in Taipei, Julia took us to Danshui. She explained it as basically the Coney Island of Taipei. It's a waterfront area out of the main city a bit. To get there, you take the red line north all the way to the end. 
We arrived in Danshui and a couple of us grabbed coffee to go, and then we walked to a restaurant on the top of a hill that offered a great view of the water. We all did our usual confused tourist thing and accidentally ordered enough beer for about twelve people, even though there were only five of us. Luckily, this was explained to us and we adjusted our order. The local brew came is large bottles and we had assumed they were much smaller. 
The food at the restaurant was good, but not great. I think the attraction is more the setting than the food. They had the satellite radio on a station that was playing American hits of the 80s and 90s. We had the feeling this was for our benefit. Unfortunately, a couple of us at the table are music snobs and after the third Celine Dion song, we couldn't take it anymore and asked for it to be changed (by this time, we were one of the last tables still eating).
Following dinner, we went for a walk down the waterfront, which was strikingly similar to waterfront areas of the northeast United States, only the signs were in Chinese. The girls found a photo booth, so Mike and I walked to a place further down that had a large neon sign of a beer glass, assuming that it was a bar. It turned out to be a restaurant. They walked us up a couple of floors, through a storage area, to the top floor deck outside. I think they were a touch put out when we only ordered beer, although I think they were a little happier when the girls showed up and we ordered a bigger round with some snack food. 
After the drinks, we walked back to the station and took the Metro back to the city and walked back to the apartment from City Hall Station.
On the walk back, we passed a restaurant and bar that's open from 7:00 PM to 7:00 AM. Liz and I had noticed it our second day in Taipei when we made the same walk. Tuesday is "foreigner night." Show your foreign ID and get 2 for 1 drinks. After much discussion, we decided to stop for a drink.
After our entirely too-filling lunch, we visited the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial (which is now called the National Taiwan Democracy Memorial Hall. Mike remarked that the whole thing had the feel of something like the Nixon Presidential Library. All of the exhibits talked about how great General Chiang was, and included a strange assortment of personal artifacts.
Generalissimo's Cadillacs.
Generalissimo at his desk. 
You will show respect in the memorial. Or else.
The morning after our night market visit would be our last in Taipei. Kathryn and Mike went off to see some more of the area around our hotel and Julia went to meet some of her arriving family members. I sat around and didn't do much. We had originally planned to go to a hotpot place for lunch, but their menu didn't work with Julia's temporary Buddhist vegetarian diet, so we ended up at a more traditional restaurant. Entirely too much food was ordered. I think Liz has pictures on her camera from the meal. I did not get any. 
Following lunch, we stopped at a shopping mall with a zen garden inside. These are apparently somewhat common.
A look at the street below.
A Chinese restaurant on the next level down. I find it surprising that they felt the need to point out that it is a Chinese restaurant.
My camera battery died on the way from Taipei 101 to the bookstore. I picked up a couple of Taiwanese cookbooks in English (well, Chinese and English), and we went back to the apartment for a little bit of rest. I put a bit of a charge on the camera battery while we were there.
The rest of the evening was spent in the Raohe St. night market. The entrance is across the street and a little down from the apartment. We spent a little bit of time there the first night in Taipei, but we were really only there long enough to get a couple of things to eat. This would be my first real night market experience.
I passed by this shrimp because I was looking for something else. Note the fresh snails (in two different sizes, or are the small ones whelks?). I'm not sure you can get non-canned snails in France. Perhaps I should have tried some.
Something I did not expect to find in a Taipei night market was fried cheese. I was not surprised, however, that Liz bought the "Cheeses of the World" selection. It was actually pretty good.
While some of us were shopping and others looking for food, Julia stopped for a massage. This electrical mess was above the massage setup. I wonder if that's up to code.
A stand of offal. I did not partake because I was already told Ray would take me to get the best chicken feet at the night market in Tainan. But that would be several days later.
Once our group was complete, we visited Taipei 101, for the moment the tallest building in the world. Across the street is a poncy shopping center called New York, New York that's full of American chain stores (and MUJI). There's a ice cream eating statue of liberty out front.
Taipei 101 is mostly an office building, but the first few levels are host to a mall, and there is an observation deck and exhibit hall on floors 97 and 98, or thereabouts. 
The day was a gloomy one for the most part. I am told that eventually the clouds parted and the view of the city was good. I did not actually see the view as I was having a bad day and was in no mood to go up to the 97th floor. 
Instead, I contented myself with wandering around downstairs and taking some pictures of the building and surrounding area from outside.
101 is connected to New York, New York by a covered walkway.
My camera battery died shortly after this picture was taken, on the walk to the book store down the street. I bought a couple of Taiwanese cookbooks at said store, then we returned to the apartment for a rest before heading to the night market.
On Sunday, we relaxed a bit. We spent the morning sitting in the room looking at the internets and looking through our pictures. 
Around noon, we set off for the golf ball mall, aka the CPC Center. This is quite possibly the ugliest, and most likely the most poorly designed mall in the world. We had to walk down four sets of escalators to get to the food court, and to get to each escalator we had to push our way through tables of merchandise on a small walkway. I ordered a beef noodle soup from one of the food court vendors and we had an enjoyable, if a bit surreal, lunch while listening to Christmas carols both played over the PA and sung live (we think). Very strange. I think there were two different versions of Jingle Bells sung with heavy Chinese accents. All I could think of was the last scene in A Christmas Story.
After lunch, we saw Ray off. He had to return to Tainan for work on Monday morning. 
We took the rest of the day rather slowly. We eventually made our way out to the NTU area for Mexican food. 
The Mexican restaurant in question is called Tequila Sunrise and, while not spectacular, is fairly decent US Mexican restaurant fare. I've certainly had worse Mexican food in the northeastern United States and Europe (Ljubljana, Slovenia, to be be precise - I have yet to experience the dreaded "Czech-Mex"). We really just went there because we try Mexican food wherever we are. If you're spending a long time in Taipei, it's worth the visit, but if not, I would recommend sticking with the local stuff. 
I also had my second in a series of Kirin brews not available at home. The Bar was a good sight better than the winter brew, and actually better than the Kirin available at home, as well.
After meeting up with Julia and Ray at the station, we walked back to NOVA and the camera area. Julia bargained with a couple of the vendors and got Liz a good deal on a Fuji instant camera. Polaroid is dead, but Fuji is still making the instant film. Then, we stopped at a hair salon so Liz could get a haircut. The salon was pretty posh looking, but is in an area full of students and is dirt cheap. The haircut was about $8. We're told that the expensive haircuts ($100+) are in a different part of town.
Once Liz had her camera, we made our way up to Tienmou for the hot springs. We went to a restaurant on the side of the mountain 
Julia and Ray thought it might be easiest if we went for the set menus. The food was certainly more interesting that way, but maybe not best.
First up were salads. They were having a vegetarian course as they were on a Buddhist vegetarian diet for 30 days before the wedding. The left salad was ours (with the shrimp) and the right theirs (with the fruit).
The second dish was a beef dish that I've forgotten the name of. It was decent if unspectacular.
Third course: Black chicken soup. The chicken looked weird but tasted like chicken. It was the odd broth and the medicinal herbs that tasted weird. This was our first of, I think, three black chicken soup experiences.
Fourth and fifth courses: winter melon soup and shrimp balls (complete with mayo and sprinkles). The soup was not great. We didn't finish it. Liz really liked the shrimp balls. I, not being a fan of the mayonnaise, appreciated them a bit less.
Last course was a funky chicken dish that was pretty good.
Following our meal was 40 minutes in the hot springs. The room we got was basically a big bathtub with controls to turn on the springs. The experience was oddly relaxing. It was a bit weird at first, but after a few minutes, we began to relax a bit. We cleaned up and caught a taxi back to the MRT. We stopped for bubble tea across the street from the station and drank it out front as there are no drinks allowed on the MRT. This was my first bubble tea experience and a positive one to boot. I didn't get the funky things in my tea this time, but I would on all subsequent tea trips.
We were slow to get around on Saturday. We spent the morning eating the remainder of the bread that Julia left and drinking Dr. Brown Coffee and milk tea that I bought at the Family Mart down the street. 
Eventually we got it together and walked to the MRT station to check out the computer market there. As we're not really looking for computer parts, there wasn't a whole lot there. There are some other electronics, but not nearly as much as the NOVA tower.
We were starving and wandered by a bunch of small restaurants. Eventually, Liz decided we needed to get red bean paste cakes from a cart. Brilliant! While we were waiting, another vendor walked by with what looked like corn dogs. Liz dared me to eat one. I didn't feel like dealing with interrupting the guy's cell phone conversation, but Liz said she'd buy it if I ate it, so she did. And... it was a corn dog. Not a bad one, either. After that, we wandered through the vegetable market across the street before making our way to the train station for lunch, and to meet Julia and Ray.
Lunch was from the food court at the station. I ordered Szechuan beef with noodles. It also came with some seaweed soup, tofu and bitter melon (I think that's what it was). It was very good. It was in a broth rather than in a sauce as you usually see in the States. 
Liz ordered pho from a Vietnamese place.
We sat around most of the morning eating breakfast and drinking tea. We finally left around 1:00. We spent the day wandering around near the train station, looking at electronics, with a break in a coffee house. Later, we rode the MRT to the Breeze shopping center and went to Muji and Tokyo Hands, where Liz bought little containers and weird things.
They tell me that people in Taipei eat hamburgers for breakfast. This one came from the place downstairs (I forget the name). It was a peppered pork cutlet. Next to it are radish cakes.
The food court in the train station is enormous and also boasts a wine store featuring the entire 2008 Wine Spectator Top 100 in their front window. We walked through but didn't eat there. A couple of hours later, we ate lunch at the food court in the department store across the street.
I had a bowl of noodles, which was quite good but not as good as the beef noodle from across the street.
You can tell rush hour, because not only does the traffic get insane, but the police appear to direct the traffic. 
By the time we got to the Breeze, my insides were tearing themselves apart, probably from the airline food consumed the previous day. Eventually nausea subsided to hunger, but they were still fighting it out when we went to the food court. I ended up ordering the same fish katsu sandwich Liz did.
It had too much of the mayonnaise on it, but was otherwise ok. Not a stellar dinner, but it settled my system down and I felt much better the rest of the evening. 
We took the MRT back to our general area and walked back to our place on BaDe Rd. By the time we returned, the night market was in full swing.
I picked up a can of Kirin's winter beer (and an enormous bottle of water) at the 7-11. The can looks nice, but I can't recommend the beer. It tastes a little too much like Genesee for my liking.
We finally crashed pretty late after sitting up researching all of the gadgets we were looking at all day. Liz found some nice-looking cameras, but wanted to actually read reviews before buying anything. I forgot to check the going exchange rates before we left, and had to make sure my calculations were correct. So, today we will likely be off to buy photo gear. I anticipate starting at the Kuanghwa market. If the deals aren't as good as what we found yesterday, then we'll probably be back at the Nova and the camera area by the main station. By that time, Julia will probably be back from Tainan. I don't know what we'll do then. There was talk of going to Tienmou.
I wonder what's for lunch.
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