Well, hello again!

It's been how long since my last post?!

Well, to catch you up, Taiwan was wonderful. Good food every single day, beautiful sights, and some of my favorite people in the world.

I took about 1,200 pictures, so I'm going to try to break up the pictures a bit. Here are just a few of the places we visited:

Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial

Taipei 101, the second tallest building in the world as of about three weeks ago. It still has the fastest elevator, though! It feels like you've gone up about 4 floors, rather than 91!

Views from the top of Taipei 101

Danshui and its night market. We went to a different night market almost every night!

We even saw a surprise solar eclipse at sunset!

We took a bus ride up into the mountains in Wulai and saw this waterfall.

Beautiful red lanterns lined streets with tons of little shops on either side and lots of good food.

Raohe St. Night Market

Shopping in Ximen

A beautiful Buddhist temple. The buildings are so ornate; it's remarkable!

Cloudy Napa

Our stay in Napa was so brief and we had so many things we wanted to do, but we really fit a lot into our short time frame, and I guess we're just going to have to plan another trip in the spring or summer to finish the rest! We had a lot of fun, though.

I love how these trees looked in the gray weather.

Upon my cousin's (and his new wife's!) recommendation, we went wine-tasting here.

The castle was completed in 2007 and took 14 years to build!

I guess the owner, Dario Sattui, got a little carried away with the design, which ended up much larger than he had originally planned, but it's beautiful and was made in the design of a traditional Tuscan castle.

And the wine was good. :) I picked up a couple of bottles for my mom.

We also drove north a little ways to see Calistoga's Old Faithful geyser (I really want to see Yellowstone's someday!). Matt wasn't initially too jazzed to check it out, but I paid for him ($10 each), and I think it was actually kind of cool.

Just a little steam; it basically just looks like a big pond with rocks

Bubbles and steam indicate that it's about to burst.

Blast off! This happens about every five minutes or so, and Matt and I watched it three times.

We already have some wineries in mind for our next trip to Napa. In the meantime, there are some wineries in southern California not too far from me that I still haven't been to, so maybe I'll have to put that into the works.

Weddings and wine

Matt and me yesterday at my cousin's wedding in Sacramento

Although I work in the wedding business and see weddings on a very regular basis, I can honestly say that the wedding was beautiful, unique, and probably more fun than about 90% of the weddings I've seen (although the outdoor ceremony was very cold!).

Matt and I are currently in Napa. Pictures to come. Right now, we're going to go and enjoy our stay! :)