First classic Lars situation: Three taxis, three couples, three kids, looking for a restaurant in a car repair area.

BAM. Gone as soon as you realise it started, weekends with the old Taipei crew are always a riot of food, laughter, cheap beer, good whisky and trips to the sweaty parts of the island. This time was no different. Well, except for the new addition of children to the mix.

Ostensibly here for the bike show, Anke was meeting with her Taiwanese employer here in Taiwan; an electric bike technology organisation. Lars popped over with her, providing baby sitting services for Linnéa, and new addition Luc. With the addition of Edgar, we suddenly had a trio of little critters running around and demanding the attention of our weary digital cameras.

Mere minutes in, I was already in a taxi, picking up Yuyin and racing across the city in search of a Gongbao Chicken recommendation from Mattieu. Dispite noisy disapproval from the cab driver, as he claimed there was ‘nothing there’, the flotilla of taxis made their way across Taipei. Circling around the area once, I took control of the situation, and pointed us back in the opposite direction to the reliable (but still delicious) ‘rechao’ on Leli Rd. Sorry to be a party pooper!

Reminds me of a photo I took of Linéa a couple of years ago.

Cute as a button.

I admire Lars’ new camera.

Luc is kind of a chilled out hippie baby.

Green with pride

Looking to the stars with Lars.

Real focus of the weekend was returning to Wulai, of course. Beloved for it’s completely crazy and lovely public hot springs, fabulous landscape, and easy access to Taipei, I make it up there with some regularity. Through what can only be described as mistakes of planning, I managed to find ourselves a pretty awesome hotel, with a huge mega room (naturally complete with KTV) for the two families and myself to crash. While I feared for the worst regarding sleep, Michael took care of it with a bottle of two of good whisky. Out like a light.

Garnished with smoked chicken, and washed down with a dip in the hot springs, it was one of those classic weekends that can’t really be summed up. Awesome.

Edgar is like a mini version of Michael, but with a better sense of humour.

Our excellent hotel, Melody Villa – prepare for crazy flash and music onslaught. Are they all from one web designer?

Peepo

Colours of Wulai

In the rush to leave the restaurant, we almost forgot Linéa.

Absolutely no bungee jumping allowed.

The hot springs were no different from usual; lovely organised chaos. The only mistake we made this time was bringing food in (‘hey we know what we are doing!’) which inevitably resulted in coffee filling one of the pools, and bits of waffle floating around for everyone to enjoy.

Yeahhhh.

I have about a thousand of these shots, as I was playing with my new waterproof (and ugly) camera.

Sugar and spice and all things nice.

If the kids were superstars already in Taipei, nothing prepared us for Wulai. Never alone, without comments about their skin or eyelids, you knew they were around due to loud screams of ‘hao ke’ai o!‘ (how cute!) echoing around the valleys. Luc and Edgar, while a mere five days apart, are built rather differently; Edgar like a little German Budda, and Luc like a tiny hippie cherub.

Chilled out Luc.

Never anything less than fascinated and smiling Edgar.

Checking out the waterproof camera.

Man time.

No trip to Taiwan would be complete without a visit to a nightmarket. While not really quite a nightmarket, Wulai’s old street sufficed, and provided us with some tasty treats for later on the evening.

Wulai old street.

Racing car start.

Luc doing some window shopping

Views up one of the side streets to buckets filled with eggs.

Convenience store.

See you next year I hope!