Taipei 101, the tallest building in the world. Man, that's big. I never got close to it, but you can see it from a looooong way away.
The streets of Taipei during the day, just before a rainstorm. In Manila, everyone carries umbrellas to keep the sun off. Here, they're ready for the skies to open up.
Ahhhh.... it's all about the food. Dinner in Taipei. Yummm. This is the menu. You point and negotiate with your waiter out here, then go in and sit down the dishes start to come. And come. And come.
Duck tongue. About the only thing on that table we didn't order.
Fortunately, as you can see, I wore the right shirt for that restaurant. And you can tell by my grin that the eating is about to be good. The smell from out front is enough to predict that!
The team I worked with in Taipei. We're about 1/3 of the way through the meal here.
More Taipei team.
Taipei at night goes late night. I didn't get to the night market, which is supposed to be an amazing sight, because it was raining on-and-off all night and we thought it would be muddy.
Monster ice. Right around the corner from one of the top 10 restaurants in the world, specializing in dim sum. This restaurant was busy and crowded at 10PM, serving big dishes of ice with fresh fruit cut on top of them and a scoop of mango ice cream. Great way to end a meal!
Oh, but we're not done. Then we went somewhere quiet to experience Chinese tea ceremony. This young woman has spent 4 years mastering the experience. Incredibly elegant and refined all the way.
Tea. Before.
Our tea table.
The gate to the Grand Hotel, Taipei.
And that would be the Grand Hotel, yep. BIG HUGE Grand Hotel. We had dim sum here for lunch. It was fantastic.
A Chinese lion in front of the Grand Hotel in Taipei. There were no lions in China, so this archetypal sculpture is based on the fantasy of the lion as created by the Chinese, in the same way as the dragons were.
A statue of General Guan, who is the patron saint of the anti-spam/anti-virus community.
Do not erase.
In Taipei, I get TWICE the space as I did in Manila. As does everyone else.
I ate lunch at a Pan Quotidien (this is actually a chain, but a nice one) at the foot of Rue Mouffetard. A pedestrians-only street allows all the food merchants to put their wares on tables and take over the street.
Paris. The markets. Wow.
Maybe you wanted some really fresh fruit?
More and more and more food...
Incroyable! Or something like that. I never took French in high school. But I do speak cheese, and this is great cheese here.
and MORE cheese
The streets of Paris, sidewalk cafès at the ready for the lunchtime onslaught.
A square near Rue St. Germain and the schools that have sprung up near the Sorbonne. Students line this, eating lunch.
St.-Etienne, a nice mix of styles, in a pleasant little square.
The nave of St.-Etienne.
The chair in St.-Etienne.