Apr 5-6, 2011 This morning was a slow one. Everyone slept in pretty late and we got up leisurely. The morning and night time is the best for us to talk to people back home because were 12 hours ahead, so lots of people were Skyping or facebook chatting with friends, so we didnt get out of the hostel until about noon. Molly went on a blog about Taipei and found the address of this adorable diner called The Diner that served brunch so we decided to do that. It turned out to be pretty close to the hostel so we got to explore the neighborhood a little on the way there. It shocked me- it was similar to the Deep Ellum area of Dallas for those of you who know what Im taking about. Really cute and eccentric, and the food at the Diner was delicious- eggs Benedict and bottomless coffee. After brunch we headed out of town to a suburb called Beitou, which is filled with hot springs. It took us a while to figure out where to go but we eventually made it to a placed called the Spring City resort, which has 7 different temperatures of hot springs. We got into our bathing suits and robes and hairnets and prepared for some relaxation. It was pretty chilly outside so the springs felt wonderful, and at the end we laid on this hot stone on the ground, which was probably the most relaxing thing Ive ever done. We spent about 3 hours there then took showers and blow-dried our hair. What a luxury! We only have teeny little hotel-like blow dryers on the ship so it was really nice. Molly combed my hair and blow-dried it for me and it was amazing. After we got dressed we got back on the subway to get ready for dinner at the night market. The night market was huge, and amazingly pretty tourist-free. We had delicious boba juice and some ice cream desert-y thing, and I tried the signature oyster omelet. Dont know if it was my favorite thing in the world but I thought my Faj would be proud of me for trying. After that we went over to the shopping part of the market. There were the cutest little shops and we ended up staying until about 1 in the morning. When we got home I got to Skype with Jojo, which was AMAZING! I havent heard her voice this entire time, and it was great getting to catch up. We Skyped until about 3 am my time and then I crawled into bed to go to sleep. After another leisurely morning we packed up all of our stuff and left it in the office of the hostel so that we could explore on our last day in Taiwan. The whole day felt a little like a dream since it was our last day in a foreign country. Its crazy- to be looking forward to something for so long and then having it end. Granted, we still had 11 days, then 2 days in Hawaii, and then 5 days on the ship but still, it really felt like the trip was coming to an end. A lot of the girls wanted to explore a different area for a while but Jenna, Kelly and I went to a cute restaurant and had a long lunch and then shopped around the area where our hostel was. We did some toiletry shopping at the body shop and at a place similar to Walgreens where I made best friends with a little dog for like 15 minutes, and then we met up with everyone else to get our backpacks and head back to the ship. When we made it back to Keelung (where our ship was docked) we sat on the boardwalk area and had some beers and hung out. It was really nice, sitting there with everyone just enjoying the nice day. We slowly made our way to the ship and then said goodbye to Taiwan as we pulled out at around 8 pm.
