Day 1: Taipei

(I have no idea what's up with the picture quality. Blogger's not as easy to use as I thought it would be.)

After an awesome 9 hours (Business class is so choice. If you have the means I highly recommend it.) heading to Narita for my connection to Taiwan I was able to grab a beer, but being Japan it couldn't just come in a bottle or can. The JAL lounge has a cool little beer dispensing machine. It tilts the glass up so the beer is poured down the side of the glass, then inexplicably a second spout adds a about an inch and a half of head.

4 hours later, finally arrived at the Grand Hyatt in Taipei. It's probably the best hotel in the city from what I can tell. I got a few quick snapshots of the night views and passed out.

The next morning I felt adventurous enough to go do a run around the city before it started getting hot and busy.

This turned out to be one of the toughest runs I've ever done: Taiwan is hot and humid. Jet lag and poorer air quality than I'm used to probably didn't help either. But I did get to see about 9 miles worth of the city on foot, take in the early Sunday locals and sights, and was able to add some awesome running accomplishments to my list:

- Run through a major Asian city.

- Run through a backalley street market (this got some curious looks).

- Run up to the top of a temple.

- Run through the outside of a shrine (couldn't really run in the shrine).

Here's the view from the top of National Decromatic something or other (the temple I got to the top of)...

More posts on the next couple of days soon- all of the pictures from that first day are up on Facebook.