Sleeping Pills, Eva, Lotsa Water

Those are Sheri's three recommendations for all those traveling to Taipei. She partly took her own advice: sleeping pills worked wonders for her and she woke without jetlag. She drank some water, but not lotsa water. And, our one failure, we didn't fly Eva. (That's a long story, and we really did try to get the Evergreen premium economy, but in the moments between checking rates and booking seats, prices went up by $1,000 USD per ticket. We ended up flying sardine class on China Airlines. They pack you in, hook you up intravenously to the nonstop video at each seat, and hope that keeps you comatose enough not to realize that the food is bad, that you can't sit normally if you're over 5'10".)

Anyway, we are so very happy to be here, finally. I got to go out for a morning run and ended up, just by chance, at the Sun-Yat Sen Memorial, where hundreds of early morning tai-chi, kung-fu and ballroom dancers were waiting to greet me. There's nothing in the world like an early morning in a Chinese city.

We're staying at the Howard Plaza, a nice choice if you're looking for places. Breakfast buffet was good, rooms roomy, service smiley. We spent some time this morning trying to see if we could get something cheaper for our final three days in Taipei, but all the hotels seem to be about the same amount of money -- $150 for singles, $200-$250 for suites. Or all the hotels that I'm allowed to look at. Cockroaches not allowed on this trip.

From here we're going to hop on a train this afternoon and probably head to Changhua, maybe to Chiayi. From Changhua we'll either head to Lugang or up into the mountains on the Jiji scenic railway. From Chiayi, if we decide on that route, we'll head up to Alishan. That little excursion will take up the next three days, and then we'll be heading to Tainan on the 17th, with a 9:30 a.m. pick-up at St. Lucy's.

Okay, Sheri's saying that we've got to pack up and go. Thanks to everyone for the well wishes and prayers -- they're working well so far. (Except for our camera -- didn't find out until getting here that our lovely Frida broke it. Alas. But Sheri's dad brought his, so that should suffice.)