Friday16thMarch07

(Okay, so it's not monday yet, but turns out that my mum took her laptop with her so I connected to the net at the hotel.)

Today was the start of my little adventure. I felt like I was on a special stealth mission when I left campus this morning. I had to be careful to get from the dorms to the bus without being detected, otherwise, my sole-mission may have been thwarted by some overprotective friends. I made it and through the crazy traffic, and onto the train (who’s destination name never seems to correlate with the names at the ticket booth, and are mostly written in Chinese.) The journey as far as Taipei had taken a neat 1 and a half hours and had gone incredibly smoothly, so, I was feeling pretty chuffed with myself as I headed on to the next leg of my journey; a few miles on the MRT and then a 10min walk to the hotel. (This should have taken around half an hour, alas, it did not... it took closer to two.) I got to the station I wanted and got off at the right stop then headed off down the street that went down on the map (since I knew I wanted to head south.) After around 20mins I started to become a little suspicious of the lack of the intersecting street I was looking for. I was also a little surprised at the lack of the Taipei 101 building in my skyline (since it’s over 500 metres tall.) I came across an MRT station so decided to consult a map. Turns out, that down doesn’t necessarily mean south on a map. I had just travelled back two MRT stops in the direction had come from, so off I went to retrace my steps. At least I was on quite a nice street. It had a New York feel to it, tall buildings and nice shops with big roads and lots of yellow cabs.
I got back to my origin and turned headed due south, finding the street I was looking for (and seeing the 101 building pretty much the whole way.) Then, I couldn't find the hotel. I had been completely unflustered by the whole thing up to this point as I was really enjoying just walking and taking in the surroundings without any hangers on. I had been standing or walking for the past three hours, and my bag was quite heavy from the offset so it was time to have a seat and chill out at a local friendly coffee shop... Starbucks. I don't usually endorse such flippant use of over commercialised coffee houses, but man that was a well enjoyed Mocha frappucino! Feeling revived, I crossed the road, and found my hotel. A job well done. Oh yeh, and my parents got there fine (a few hours after me.)