One week from today we will be getting on a plane to start the first leg of our seven week trip around the world. The first leg will go from Kaohsiung to Singapore to Abu Dhabi to Paris. After a few days in Paris we take a train to Germany for another few days. Then back on a plane from Frankfurt to Reykjavik to Boston. Seven short weeks in the States and we take our final (very long) series of flights from Buffalo to NYC, then westward over all of North America and the Pacific Ocean to Hong Kong and then one last puddle-jumper back to Kaohsiung. Sounds pretty crazy to me, but there you go.

This morning we attempted to get some things done in preparation of this trip. We hopped on the bikes and headed to the bank - check. Next, get the apartment key copied so we can give our new cleaning lady her own set of keys. No check - we couldn't find the shop we thought we remembered on Yucheng and Huarong. Put that back on the list of to-dos.

Next stop the train station to do some last minute shopping at a store recommended by a friend. No check - either we didn't find the store our friend recommended or we need to remember not to take her advice again. That's okay, we also planned on getting lunch at one of the many Japanese restaurants at the train station. Check, we got lunch, but it will be counted as one of the worst meals we've had in Taiwan.

Since the shopping didn't work out we decided to go to our favorite grocery store and do one final shop for everything we need to get us through one last week of meals. The route there passed near our favorite tea shop so we made a detour for some grapefruit green tea. At least we knew it would taste much better than our lunches had. We were suitably rehydrated, but found ourselves unmotivated for tackling the shopping with the Saturday afternoon crowds.

So after three hours and 10 miles of biking we came home with one item checked off on our to-do list. Ah well, there's always tomorrow...