A Trip to Taipei

3-3-13

Yesterday, the weather in Taipei was wonderful and we had a nice day. After we arrived at Taipei Station, we transferred from the HSR to the Taipei MRT and went to Gong-guan station near Taiwan University for lunch at the Thai restaurant there. Before lunch, I had a seen a street sign that said ‘Taipei Water Park’ and I asked Leona about it. She told me it was a bunch of old buildings in a park and there were water rides for children, too. I was curious and we decided to go there after lunch since it was a short distance away. It turns out the area was the original Taipei Water Works purification plant since 1908 and closed in the ‘70’s. The structure housing the filtration pipes for the water from the Sin-dian River is a beautiful Baroque brown building that you would never guess housed the pipes and switches and gages and valves that it does. We had fun walking around the grounds as well in cool dry Taipei.

 

      After we left the park, we walked back to the street with the Tai restaurant to visit a pet store that had a scratching board for the cats. Enough of dragging around the carry-on luggage, we got back on the MRT and took it to Ding-hao where our hotel was. We rested there for a few hours and then went out to meet Leona’s friend William for dinner. The restaurant he was going to bring us to was closing having lost their lease so I suggested we go to “Amigo,” a Mexican style restaurant I saw along the way. We treated William to dinner this time. After dinner we walked along Zheng-xiao Road and said goodbye. Then we went to the Eslite Bookstore on Dun-hua South Road. We browsed a while and I got two books; The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran and Debt: The First 5,000 Years by my old Wobbly friend, David Graeber.

 Graeber, who is credited with naming the 99% of Occupy Wall Street, was signed up by me to the IWW NYC GMB when I was a delegate. I had to buy his book. It made me think of writing my own book about my Wobbly experiences. I may compile information on a blog and go from there. Maybe not. Very painful.

After we left Eslite, we took a walk in the little streets behind Zheng-xiao Road and found an empty lounge bar called “Live Music & Restaurant.” With only a few people, some of whom sang karaoke songs, I had rum and cola and Leona had a tequila sunrise. We sat and chatted and went back to the hotel. We were going up to Tan-shui today until we got the call from her brother. Her father was ill and we had to go home.