淡水 (Dànshuǐ/Tamsui)

As you may recall me mentioning before, we arrived to Taipei on 12/8/12.  It was raining that night & it rained on & off everyday until 12/13/12 (Thursday).  Needless to say at the first sign of sunshine we were off...
We meet up with Ting x2 & Xiaowei at a local tourist attraction called Dànshuǐ (although on the subway map it's called Tamsui not Dànshuǐ, so  for the entire MRT ride we weren't really sure if we were going to end up in the correct location, but we did).

Now, I have had calamari several times before, back home. I don't know why but, for some reason seeing the entire, kind of large, squid on a stick was...well...um different.  I do have to admit after the food vendor yells, "要 辣 Yào Là" (want spicy-hot) & we answer, "我 要 辣 Wǒ Yào Là" ( I want spicy), then he/she sprinkles a whole bunch of spicy something, a giant squid on a stick becomes appetizing. Actually, Sam was excited from the moment he laid his eyes on the sea creatures.

I can't remember the correct terminology for these two dishes, but it is traditional Taiwanese (not Chinese) food & the restaurant we ate it at is famous in the area.

We captured a lot of food items...round fried egg wrapped with tiny fish, if you look closely you can see the fish eyes. 

Not sure what is in the middle of these shells, but Sam tried one...samples were free after all.

Dànshuǐ is a really pretty location, know also for it's sunsets.  Our photos don't do it enough justice.

This a screen shot of Sam practicing the lesson we learned that day.  Xiaowei & Ting x2 were testing him.  Please try to picture how this looked and sounded to the locals...Sam would start off & mid-sentence he would stop say wait and then start again and then get excited when he recalled the correct word. The whole time we would throw back words or questions at him. This went on, rather loudly,  for 5-10 minutes.  It's hard to see but the boys on the other bench, in the background were mesmerized, they were looking the entire time (they kinda turned away when I finally got my camera out).  At, first I thought they were laughing at him; they weren't.  When I got a better look, their expressions read, "加油 Jiāyóu" or "You can do it!".  They seemed relieved when Sam was done...haha.