First weekend

What a first weekend in Taipei. I decided to play tourist and basically walked around for my entire waking hours. Saturday was spent at the Botanical Gardens, then at the Dadaocheng fireworks festival. The festival started at 3pm, and I got there shortly after... however what I didn't anticipate is the whole of Taipei showing up. After every single spot to sit down was taken by 6pm (fireworks were supposed to start at 9:30pm or so), I decided to give my feet a rest and went home. Unfortunately my cute idea of taking a random bus that happened to be going in the same direction I was walking ended up with me being in a random suburb of Taipei across the Danshui River because I *thought* I saw the Chinese character for station... oops. I found another bus, fortunately.  I heard of a place called Snow King - a unique icecream shop serving a myriad of strange flavours and went there, discovering the Clarke's Quay-type place known as Ximen in the process. I have to say, pig feet ice cream was certainly an acquired taste, but the chili pepper flavour wasn't bad. Met a few interesting people along the way, and across the city.  The next day was relatively quiet with the highlight of the day being a traditional Chinese ethnic minorities concert at Zhongshan Hall - I wish videography was permitted because the performances were just stunningly beautiful. On the other hand, videos would not have done sufficient justice.