Around The World In 72 Days - Arrival Of The Grandchildren

As mentioned in my trip concept explanation post one of the prime motivators of this trips design was to have time alone with two of our grandchildren, 2.2 & 2.3*. 

Because their Mom #2 is a diplomat of career, they have spent much of their time outside of the United States (Manila, Hong Kong, Kiev, Erbil [Iraq], and now Shanghai). As much as Wife and I have put in the time and effort to go visit them wherever they are, realistically it has been hard for us to truly be a part of the family's life. That was why our original idea in 2020 of getting time with them by ourselves was so important. Then Covid comes along, the disruption made many times worse for the #2's because of China's extended, draconian shutdown, and that idea gets blown out of the water.

Now the two are 18 and 17 respectively. 2.2 will be graduating high school this year and will heading to Spain for her university schooling. It was now or never.

*Note About Name Designations

As I gave the blog out to some new readers for this trip, I thought an explanation of name designations would be appropriate. When I started my blog in 2017, I didn't understand protocol and made the mistake of putting people's actual names in my posts. I was very quickly educated that was not proper and started to come up with various names for people. It started to get very complicated as I have three daughters, three son-in-laws, and eight grandchildren. For my own piece-of-mind and ease of remembering, I created an alpha numeric system to keep track of everyone. The primary offspring are daughters 1, 2, & 3 in age order. Their husbands are given a letter designation based on if it is a first, second, or third marriage. Thus 3A is daughter #3's first husband. 2B is daughter #2's second husband. We have no C's in the family at this time. The grandchildren are numeric in birth order. Thus 2.2 is the second child of daughter #2. 2.3 is the third child of daughter #2. Simple. N'est-ce pas!

Further Settling In 

With the grandchildren scheduled to arrive in the mid-afternoon, the first order of business was getting our Metro cards (the Easy Card) filled up, figuring out how to get to the airport, and in general figure out where the heck we were and how to get around. It is a cool feature of Taipei that their Metro cards don't expire so the ones we lovingly brought back in 2017 and kept in our safe were fully functional. Walking to the nearest Metro station allowed us to get our bearings finally. On the way back, we found a second supermarket that was even closer and was a European chain (Carrefour), which allowed us to get a few things that were more to our taste for breakfast. 

One of our challenges is has been the address on our Airbnb reservation is not actually the address where we are staying. This is exacerbated by our unfamiliarity of the street naming system. Knowing we wanted to take a cab from the airport, I was searching for a way to resolve the issue. I decided to try taking a picture our street sign and building number

Collection

Fortunately for us, the grandkids will be arriving at Taipei's second airport, the Songshan Airport, which is much closer into town than the main airport we arrive at. It is literally three metro stops from the station closest to us. We arrive in plenty of time to spare. The pictures I took worked like a charm and the cab dropped us of exactly in front of our apartment building. We did a little tour of the neighborhood, picked up some food items for them. We took a rest and went out for some dinner.

Returning to the apartment (let's hear it for young people carrying your heavy burdens)

 

We ate dinner at a place (there are so many food places around us it is crazy) the grandkids said is typical for a regular, 'just get a meal' type of place. You place your order, bring your own drinks, the food comes quickly, it is very good and very inexpensive.

First picture from top is braised pork, below is braised pork belly. Second picture is beef curry, and another braised pork. Vegetables of the day were something like bok choy, bamboo, bean sprouts, egg. There is also some braised peanuts in a bowl. Price for four people was $25.

This is definitely a 'late' culture. Nothing really opens until 11am and people are out all through the evening. We went for a walk afterwards and things were bustling.

Then we called it a day

Signs of the World

In Taipei, you have your choice of a variety of levels of cleaning. This is one of the highest.