Taiwan Shabbat

We spent Shabbat dinner with our new friends Theresa, Lee and Maddy. We pushed the sundown envelope a bit because they were late getting to our hotel. Turns out Friday-night traffic is not just an American phenomenon. I justified it but reassuring myself that there was a very good chance that the people preparing our meal were not Jewish. Friday night consisted mainly of hanging out in the lobby of our hotel, watching the people go by, playing with the babies and exchanging new adoptive parent blessings and concerns. It was wonderful to have Shabbat company.

When the front desk told us that it would take 50 minutes to walk to the Sheraton for services, we nixed the very cool idea of going to shul in Taipei and spent a quiet Saturday morning at home in our hotel room. Following Romi's post-breakfast nap we headed out into the humidity to walk a bit in the city. Our destination was a park a few blocks away, but our purpose was really just to spend a bit more time in Taipei.

The other hotels in town that we considered staying at were all across town, in the fancy-schmancy shopping district. Our hotel was in a much more "authentic" part of town, meaning that when we wandered the small, crowded and fascinating streets, we were the only non-Asian people around. As we walked, Romi continued to get his share of the attention, so it took a bit longer than it should have to cover the few short blocks to the park.

As we went we saw a million scooters (of course!) and lots of dogs. People own these dogs, but they hang out in the street, taking themselves to the park. They even wait for the lights to cross the street (seriously). They hang out in stores and restaurants. It's wild. The park was lovely. It had lots of sculptures, a good view of the Grand Hotel, a baseball diamond (we stopped to watch an inning), tennis courts, playground, swimming pool and a maze. The maze was done in hedges and I wanted to go play Harry Potter but it was all in the sun so we opted to skip it. We especially enjoyed the park signs, including the one that read, "No to abuse sword," which by the accompanying picture we are pretty sure meant to stay off the grass.

We headed home, had pizza for dinner motzei shabbas (and yes, they gave us more ketchup) and Romi and I crashed early. Good thing, 'cause we had a big going home day scheduled for Sunday!