last day in taiwan for us. this means getting up early, having breakfast, packing things, trying to fit all the additional stuff we acquired since day 01 into the luggage along with all the other things, checking out, leaving our luggage at the hotel, then wandering some malls to find a suitable bag for hand luggage, as all the stuff didn't fit into the rucksacks, returning our "easycard" that was used for the metro, and then spending all the money we got left on souvenirs, cute and cool stuff we saw, and, and, and. you see, we've been pretty busy. our flight will leave at 22:15 and so far no signs of any typhoon-related troubles. so plenty of time to spend the last taiwanese dollars (TWD), because at home there wouldn't be much use for them. one thing we used to money for was souvenirs, useless stuff[02,04] and food[09-19,31-32], like this steam pot restaurant[09-19] right at the central station. there was steam everywhere, and one had to decide was soup all the stuff will be cooked in. nina went for a chinese medical soup (whatever that means), i went for the seaweed soup. then we could choose rice or noodles (where we chose the latter), and then some pork[13], and a sea-food plate[15-17]. so at first we got a bowl[10] full of vegetables, mushrooms, and other stuff we could not identify. by that time we didn't know there will be the really huge seafood plate, because the bowl already contained some crab stuff and shrimps. all the stuff was delicious and fun to prepare. in the end the soup was a mix of flavours of all the stuff we put in it to cook. so very nomnom. desert was a taro-cake[18-19] - totally weird and strange colour, but it tasted delicious. then it was time so say goodbye and head for the airport. so we got on the bus to the airport and drove back the same way we came on day 01. sniff, sniff. but it wouldn't be taiwan, if there wasn't a nice surprise for us at the airport (just to make farewell even harder). a hello kitty self-check-in area[20-22,24]! how awesome is that? but also the normal check-in counters[25] where in hello kitty style! by now nina got hungry again, so she had a dumpling-snack[31-33] right next to "taipeh 101"[27,30], after check-in, and did some last calls home on the hello kitty phone[34-35]. after security checks we also found this cute hello kitty store[40] that even has a lovely hello kitty mahjongg[41]. aaaw, so cute, too bad we have to leave... resumee: wonderful holidays, thanks nina. also thanks to jeff once more for all the good tips and suggestions on where to go and what to eat. it's really hard to find information about places on the internet, since the romanization of chinese characters is not standardised. thus, e.g. to look up some stuff on the "jiji" train, one should also use the search terms "chichi", and "qiqi". it did not get easier that nina had an english, while i had a german travel guide, since they also differ in the names. 1718 pictures turned out to be useful. i hate typhoons. track: day 22