Bitan paddle boats

Hello! I can't believe it's been a week since I last blogged on here. Yesterday most of the city was shut down because of a typhoon. It turned out to be not too bad--mostly just rain throughout the day--but schools and businesses will often shut down preemptively in case it turns dangerous.

Andrew and I had lunch with his extended family, and it was really weird to travel through the city and see it so empty.

A couple days before that, we took a bus to Bitan, a river where you can rent paddle boats.

A view of the river

giant bridge!

These boats were benched for poor conduct

There were a lot of tiny lapdogs on this jogging path

It cost about $5 USD per person to go into a paddleboat. We got life jackets and went down to the dock.

it was a whale of a time

According to Andrew, the guy who was in charge of the boats lectured everyone in Chinese about how they run a safe operation and we shouldn't do anything to jeopardize that safety. We spent part of our boat ride speculating about what boneheaded stunt some other tourist had probably pulled today to make him give us that speech.

our swan boat, being pulled out by a superior boat

the couple in this boat immediately pulled over to take a bunch of selfies

we had no selfie stick so we could not be like Selfie Couple

There were a few other boats out on the water with us, including some that looked like they were a little stuck by the shore.

Paddle boats are harder than they look to maneuver. The steering was easy but it took a lot of furious pedaling to go anywhere, especially when there's a strong current.

But the scenery was pleasant, and you could stop pedaling and let yourself float around without too much of a problem.

We paid for an hour in the paddle boats, and at first I was afraid we wouldn't be able to fill the time. 

We could only spy on Selfie Couple for so long, and there weren't that many different rocks to look at...

But the time flew by. There was a man diving for clams who looked around sixty years old, which was fun to watch.

Also, adventure struck--we saw a plastic bottle floating in the water. Environmental Science major that he was, Andrew could not let this slide. We eventually managed to paddle over to rescue the bottle so it could be properly recycled.

it took a lot of leg strength to get us to this moment of victory

Then we saw a swan on a rock. We tried three times to paddle over to it, but the current was too strong.

Of course, there is one foolproof way to spend an afternoon....

we gave this up pretty quickly when we
realized people in other boats could see us playing fire emblem

After paddle boats, we grabbed some dinner on the boardwalk.

Andrew making a very creepy friend

One restaurant had fake food displays out front....
i wonder if you have to pay extra to get a ghost to feed you pasta

a very fancy restaurant on the boardwalk (we did not eat here)

 We wound up at a restaurant with a view of the river.

 

I ordered hot pot, which was the only vegetarian option. Actually, a lot of the restaurants I've been to in Taipei have had a fairly small selection of vegetarian food, which is similar to the states. But unlike a lot of restaurants in the U.S., the vegetarian selections generally have a lot of protein and are not eggplant parmesean. 

You cook this stuff in the pot

This is the pot! It has a tomato broth. You can control the flame.

Our food came with the most giant bubble teas I had ever seen.

 

Seriously, they were the size of my forearm.

Here's a picture of Andrew's food, in case you are an omnivore.

ok even i have to admit this looks pretty good

Tara, Andrew held up a tomato to the camera just for you!

After dinner we walked along the bridge over the river. It was a pedestrian bridge only, and it swayed a little bit, though not enough to be scary.

Unfortunately my camera doesn't do nighttime very well.

Yeah, this is the best nighttime picture I got

...So here are some dusk pictures!

The bridges at Bitan light up rainbow at night. Sometimes they change color.

 

The last interesting thing of the day was that we saw a falcon! It was perched on the side of the bridge.

At first we thought it had just landed there, and were concerned for the safety of the man standing next to it.

But then, when we walked back along the boardwalk, we saw him take the falcon into a restaurant. So he was probably a falconer, or was on the weirdest date of his life.

I'll have the penne a la pesto, and Gerome would like your finest bowl of worms

we should do this more often, Gerome