I'm not going to lie. Yesterday sucked.

I say this on Wednesday the 5th, about Tuesday the 4th. Wednesday the 5th has been a stellar improvement.
I have seen a pattern when I travel that I have one day that is a shitshow. Said shitshow usually occurs a 1/3 to 1/2 way into the trip, so I already have a precedence set for un-shitshow-ness, with which to comfort myself. Not so on Tuesday the 5th, my friends.
As of this writing, I have yet to get a normal night of sleep, although I am no longer jet-lagged and tired. Because I am on my feet so much, I have lower back pain when I lie down and cannot sleep on my stomach. This does not happen in my normal life. And the pain goes away as soon as I'm up and moving, but I imagine it has contributed to me waking up between 12 and 1am and struggling to get back to sleep.
On Tuesday, when I did get up, I saw I'd received a suspicious email and had to call Apple at 7am, my time, to see if it was phishing. Luckily that was relatively quick Apple call and I managed to not lose my shit. (Lesson learned when a sleep-deprived Delia in Prague did click the naughty link and had to change her AOL password.)
I left to get breakfast at the place my book raves about, to find out that it is not where the book says it is on the map. So I went into a bakery, bought two baked things and some coffee, as it started to rain. I went by a famous building but it was overrun with school children. I went to Tian hou temple nearby. There were people actually worshipping so I didn't want to take a ton of pictures.

I went into Starbucks to get some more coffee and figure out my day. So far this is all within blocks of my hotel. As I've said, I decided I would rely more on the subway here to get around. In a way this is a bummer since I rely on walking everywhere to become oriented to the city. But given that no map that I have shows all the streets and things are spread out, I decided to get a 3-day pass, which is well worth it.
I ATTEMPTED to go to the National Museum of History. This was my attempt at being educated. I got out of the subway. It was raining. There was construction. I am still getting used to the street signs (I took some pictures today and will show you what I mean) and GPS was literally fucking with me. I couldn't get my bearings. And I admittedly have to frustration tolerance so was getting pretty upset. When I finally found the museum, it said it was closed for three years for renovations (so much for my education.) I was getting hungry. I ate more baked goods because it's accessible. But I do wonder if my body was also reacting to a lack of nutrients.
I headed to the MOCA. By now, I'm in full mental tailspin, having a very negative attitude about this trip. There were two exhibits. One was centered on sound - there were installations in dark rooms with visuals on screens. One had really lovely music and I want to look up the guy who did it. OK I just did. It seems the song is by an artist that was then reinterpreted for the exhibit. I found the song on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCCNgmm-8rk . Let's see if that works. The artists are Ashen and Maywa Denki. I think the song is Ashen's (in the video) but for the exhibit Maywa Denki used wood instruments to play the music accompanying the same vocals. Anyway, it was great. The other exhibit was also about sound and there was a lot going on in the dark. There were sculptures and installations and headphones to listen to the accompanying sounds. You can see me as part of the art:

And some other thing:

I got lunch at a vegetarian restaurant my book suggested. It was very good and I'll probably go back. At this point things were looking up, but because I'm me, I'm still thinking "why bother" and that the trip has lost all meaning and pleasure. Go figure.
I went to the Red House, a few blocks from my hotel (which I also attempted to do earlier when I found out they had not opened yet.) It's a cultural center and market and I might return to get some tempered bronze earrings I saw there. There is also a a gay bar "district" behind it and I'll probably go get a drink there.

I think one of the things that had me all angsty, besides the rain and the shitty GPS and inaccurate guide book, was the plan to go down to Kaohsuing on Friday. I don't like moving around a lot when I travel and given I was having a hard time finding a museum, the idea of negotiating a trip to southern Taiwan was making me cranky. I thought Taipei wouldn't fill 12 days but I was already feeling rushed and discombobulated. And I'd rather have too much time than not enough. I'd purposefully reserved a hotel room I could cancel last minute because I knew I might decided against going, which is exactly what I did. I canceled that hotel and got another hotel in Taipei. My room has a window, and the hotel has free breakfast, and it's still pretty centrally located. I had wondered if getting a hotel room without a window was going to effect me. And while I don't feel claustrophobic, it sucks to not be able to look outside and see the weather. As soon as I got that new hotel, I felt relieved.
Lastly, I went to the Shilin Night Market. (Did I tell you how easy it is to get around on the subway, actually the MRT?)

This market has both food and other goods, I went down to the food court and got some noodles. The nice lady offered me a beer and when she brought it, the cap was about at eye-level (so a little bigger than I was expecting.)

I walked around, got a taro-marshmallow-pancake dessert thing. And more cut fruit.
So the day ended quite well.
Today has been full. I was out from 7am to 3pm, and here I am writing this. I'll save all that for later.