Boys wanted to sleep in- I wanted Mae and I to go see the panda’s at the zoo so it was perfect!  Got Mae up early- like 9:00AM.  But by her moaning and groaning you’d have thought it was 4:00AM.  Our apartment is located in the North of Taipei and the zoo is WAY in the south of Taipei so decided to take the train.

The 1st thing I looked for when we arrived last week was a coffee maker- there wasn’t one, and this mama needs her morning coffee.  Bought some instant flake things that were awful but then found these filtered coffee things at Starbucks:

There are coffee grounds in the green basket thing, you pour hot water into basket and the water runs thru the coffee and a filter to the cup.  As hot water makers are super popular here it was an answer to my prayer.  Haven’t seen these in the States.  They actually are very good.

Part of the fun of walking around is finding all the yummy places to grab street food, had some sort of dumpling thing-it was yummy.  By the looks of the map we would have to change train lines.  The trains run every 5 minutes, have A/C, are VERY clean as are the stations.    The train runs both underground and above ground.  It was about 20 stops to get to the zoo and an easy train switch- well lots of walking but signage was good.

I’d read that you are given timed tickets once you enter the zoo as to when you can go to the panda house- our ticket was stamped for the time we entered zoo so headed right over to the panda.  They had their own building- the exhibit was inside- 2 different caged areas.  All concrete – an improvement over the last time i’d seen pandas in the Guangzhou zoo 30 years ago- then they were in a concrete cage about 12’X12′ – very sad.  This was an improvement – but barely.

We also stopped at the koala exhibit:

 OMG so cute!  Headed home just as the boys were heading out for lunch- they love the independance and exploring on their own.

They also love to take taxi’s and the train…..not so much.  While there are many cars on the roads here there are also millions of scooters:

 There are parking areas all over for them- helmets are mandatory.  The boys want to rent scooter I said “no” in a manner that means NO!!!

Max wanted to head back to the night market near us so we did- he bought ANOTHER soccer ball.  The kid is obsessed and some phone covers.  The market was packed- we all got some of our favorite things to eat!  So yummy!