It's been a whirlwind of exploring the mountains outside Taipei for the past two days with Mrs. Hsu. I'm still working on downloading the photos so I'll continue adding those as I get them on the computer, but here's a quick recap before we head out to the train bound for Kaohsiung. (Addendum: photos have been added.)

On Wednesday we took a bus west out of the city to the village of Shiding. It takes about a half hour to go from the middle of the city of millions of people to this little town in the rugged, undeveloped mountains. As you can imagine, during the weekends it's packed with city dwellers out for some fresh air and a natural setting to stretch their legs. There's a river that cuts through the center of town that has a walking path along the edge that stretches for many kilometers. The hiking paths in the woods are pretty extensive as well. Lots of hearty bikers make the arduous trek up into the mountains too.

We limited ourselves to a stroll through town, with a stop at an art gallery, and a short walk along the river, in between raindrops.

Then we hopped into a taxi to take us further into the mountains to a vegetarian restaurant run by some artist friends of Mrs. Hsu. The food was incredible and the setting spectacular.

Mr. Wen is a calligrapher and he painted us a poem.

It says (I'm paraphrasing) ,"On a cold winter's night I had no wine to serve my guests so I gave them hot tea instead." Mrs. Hsu brought Zach and Cierra here when they visited in November and Mr. Wen painted them a poem. He remembered that and and wanted us to have the same poem as theirs.

After lunch Mrs. Hsu brought us back to the city to do some shopping and then met up with Simona and Mr. Hsu for dinner. That makes for a very long day when you're adjusting to a 13 hour jet lag but we mustered through it. Fortunately, traveling back to Taiwan is much easier that traveling to the U.S..

I'll add Thursdays activities when I get back home this afternoon.