A Weekend of Firsts!!!

It was Mid-Autumn Festival this weekend, which meant all the accommodation at the hot spots outside Taipei had been booked well in advance. So we did what any disorganized, fun-loving family would do... we planned a holiday for another weekend and used this one for day trips! We packed a lot of family fun into these past 4 days... a lot of public transportation too! Each day we did something somewhat new - to us and Hunter! It was great fun...

Tuesday was the actual "Moon Festival" or "Mid-Autumn Festival". We eat a citrus fruit called a yozi (pomelo) at this time of year and apparently local children put the peel on their heads for good luck. Of course we don't believe in luck, but he looked so cute with his yozi hat! And he actually quite liked the fruit... his first citrus fruit... till we put a halt on his intake after hearing that it causes diarrhea in adults if eaten too much! Yikes!!! Plus I'm not sure if he's quite ready for citrus!

We took a walk through the Taipei Zoo with Richard & Marlin... it was a gorgeous day to be out and about! Hunter's first zoo trip!!!

I think giraffes are pretty interesting creatures... mostly I was having fun playing with my new camera's zoom feature! Pretty impressive!

On Monday we took the MRT to the end of the line in Danshui (1 hour) then took a bus (35 minutes) to the BEACH!!! YAHOO... Hunter's first time to the beach!!! We went with 3 other friends and though the time at the beach was short, it was worth it!!

It ended up being a stunning day - a bit of cloud cover at the hottest part of the afternoon - but otherwise blue skies with white clouds. You'd almost think you were in NZ, but the beach set-up is totally different than anything we'd expect at home... next time we'll get photos of that.

Hunter experienced sand for the first time... it took him a while to get used to it... but once he did, of course it went into his mouth like everything else!!!

On Sunday we took our first train trip over to Keelung - the main port northeast from Taipei. We walked around a bit, ate some lunch, then headed home... not so eventful, but we discovered a train station closer to our house for future train trips!

I was so excited to see water... till I really looked and noticed how much debris and rubbish was floating in the water! Yuk!!!

Okay... so this must be the wordiest sign I've ever seen in my life! Anybody know what it means?