Lee was feeling a bit under the weather Friday afternoon - the road to recovery after pneumonia is very long indeed - so Gavin and I ventured out on our own after school. The weather has been cold and rainy and yesterday evening was no better. But he's only here for a week so you just put with it and go.

First, we headed downtown to the 85 Tower. I've been wanting to go visit there since we arrived last year but hadn't taken the opportunity before. It's 85 stories tall, as you can imagine, and was briefly the tallest building in Taiwan until the Taipei 101 was built a few years ago. There's an observation area on the 74th floor, which is where we headed.

My fear of heights has decreased substantially over the last few years and I did pretty well up there. The elevator is incredibly fast - I think it takes about 45 seconds to reach the 75th floor. That was the most unnerving part. With the smog and low clouds I expected the view to be ho-hum but it was actually pretty spectacular. There were no mountains to see and our neighborhood was lost in the gloom but the building is so much taller than anything else and right next to the harbor so you can see the layout of downtown incredibly well. Gavin had come downtown a couple days ago to see the AIT building and the newly built library, which are both architecturally remarkable buildings. It was pretty cool to look down on them from so high up.

Given that the weather was so crappy, it wasn't surprising that we had the observation deck pretty much to ourselves. (It's called a deck but it's all enclosed, which was fine by me.) We wandered around, paid our 10NT to look through the binoculars, watched the lights of the city start flickering on, then got hungry and headed down to the mall for dinner. That was a forgettable meal, not surprisingly, so we walked through the rain to the Liuhe night market.

Lee and I had been there once before and it's nice to see the contrast between that one and Rueifong, the one close to our apartment. I like Rueifong better because it's more congested, people bumping into each other, alleyways lined with tightly packed stalls that crisscross every which way. Liuhe is a city street closed to traffic for the evening, the stalls lined up along the sidewalk. It's a straight shot down one side and back the other. Last night it was busy with what I can only guess was a couple of busloads of Chinese tourists, all huddled under their umbrellas, sampling the deep fried fish balls and squid on a stick.

We bought some nougat, mochi and chopsticks. Oh, and the fabulous candied sweet potatoes I love at the other night market. Yum. Then back onto the subway and home for me, Rueifong for Gavin. He wanted some more of the tofu we'd gotten before and couldn't find at Liuhe plus he really needed to find our favorite scallion pancake guy. I think Gavin may have fallen in love with him, same as us.