It’s pretty obvious by now that I have failed in blogging everyday. I was on track but then my family came to Taipei to visit and we’d wake up early to go out, walk around the entire day, and get home late at night all tired. Rinse and repeat.
After missing a couple of days, I decided I didn’t want to go through with it anymore, and I stopped. Today is the 23rd of the month. One week left and it’s bye bye August and hello September. Wow, time seriously flies by super fast. Let’s rewind to the past 2 weeks.
August 12
Goku bought a couple of traditional Taiwanese breakfast, and we also passed by this famous breakfast place called 永和豆漿 to buy some more things we wanted to let N try. After breakfast, we went to Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall to walk around and to go up the 85 (?) steps to see his bronze statue. It was super hot outside! The sun was shining so bright and I was sweating a lot. We headed to Longshan Temple and then after that, we met up with Richelle at Taipei 101 MRT station.
We walked to Woolloomooloo (which is this Australian restaurant that N wanted to try) where I had earlier on made a reservation at. It was my first time there and I had seen some friends eat there before, and they said that the food was good so I had some expectations. The food was indeed so good! Yuuuum. After lunch, we were super full and so we walked back to Taipei 101 and we walked around the area. Then, it started to rain a bit so we had to change our plans. We went to Shilin MRT station supposedly to go to National Palace Museum, but then N wanted to grab a cup of coffee and we saw this cafe/store (I think it was called Joyce Cafe?) near the MRT station so we went in. Good thing too, because a couple of minutes after we went inside, it started to rain hard.
I looked around at some of the things they were selling (they had whole-wheat pancakes that I’ll go back there for) and I found out that they mostly sell healthy or organic products. Oooh. I ended up buying 3 chocolate bars – 2 from France and 1 from Spain, simply because I wanted to try them.
After drinking our lattes, we walked to the bus stop and proceeded to National Palace Museum. Tiff and N went in, and the rest of us went to a nearby restaurant for snacks and to wait for them. We met up with Goku and their friends for dinner at an Italian restaurant – just a big family reunion of sorts. The food was goooood. We were supposed to go to Shilin night market after but Tiff and N were too full for dinner that they weren’t up for the night market anymore. In hindsight, we could’ve just gone for some shopping or walking around, we didn’t need to eat. Oh well.
I’m always ready. Hahaha
On the way home, we passed by this massage place and decided to go inside. It was my first time getting a massage in Taiwan because it’s sooo much cheaper to get massages in the Philippines and I didn’t want to spend money getting a massage here. Since it was N’s treat (YAY, THANK YOU!), I was able to finally get a massage here. I had the 30 minute lower body massage (I think it cost 300NTD) and it was soooo good.
I forgot to mention in yesterday’s post that Tiff got me a Casio watch and Panasonic earphones. Weeee! I love them. Thank youuu!
August 13
We had another traditional Taiwanese breakfast at Richelle’s favorite breakfast place. We ordered a lot of food! After breakfast, we went to Treasure Hill Art Village to walk around. Richelle and I had never been there before but we’d seen some articles online saying it was a nice and interesting place to go to. They open at 11AM and we were there before that so we had to wait til they open. However, we didn’t take into consideration how it’s currently summer and how 11AM would mean that the sun was so bright and it was so hot. Tsk. We walked around inside the art village and stumbled upon a cafe that was already open. Whew! We had drinks and we cooled inside the cafe for a while. According to the owner of the cafe, we were the first customers of the day. People usually arrived at around 3-4PM when it wasn’t as hot. She told us to come back during autumn or winter so that it would be colder and it wouldn’t be so tiring to walk around.
When we were tired and hot enough from walking around Treasure Hill, we took a cab and went to Yongkang Street to eat at Ding Tai Fung. We had to wait for almost 2 hours because there were a looot of people waiting in line. We spent most of the time inside Kingstone, which is this bookstore beside the restaurant. While waiting, we started looking at the menu and deciding on what to eat. Ordered a lot of food! Yummyyyy. I feel like that’s the only thing I know how to say about food – it’s either they’re yummy/delicious or they’re not good.
After eating, we headed to Ximending to get our nails done (Tiff and I), while N, mom, and dad went to Starbucks for drinks. When we were all done, we walked around Ximending for some shopping. Went home after that for a despedida/family reunion dinner. So much food! We were supposed to go to Shilin night market again but since they were full again, we didn’t go anymore. We ended up going to another massage place and this time, I got an upper body massage. Went home and went to bed!
C'est moi 