{"id":2816,"date":"2014-04-02T20:40:09","date_gmt":"2014-04-02T11:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/?p=2816"},"modified":"2014-04-02T20:43:14","modified_gmt":"2014-04-02T11:43:14","slug":"taiwan-second-stage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/?p=2816","title":{"rendered":"Taiwan Second Stage"},"content":{"rendered":"

You can see pictures from our trip here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The second day in Taipei we slept in a bit, and then met Yoshi and family in the lobby to head out to their favorite breakfast diner. \u00a0We emerged from the train station and found a line of several hundred people already waiting for breakfast. \u00a0Wow.<\/p>\n

We got in line, and ended up waiting about 40 minutes until we got a seat. \u00a0Thankfully, the breakfast was worth the wait. \u00a0It was hard to describe the dishes, but we several bowls of soup – one was a sweetened soy milk and the other was a salty version with fried bread and spices mixed in. \u00a0There was also an egg crepe, a clump of rice that turned out to be surrounding a mixture of dried pork and spices, and then there were some buns that contained meat substitutes, like dried radish and peppers. \u00a0It was very, very good. \u00a0I was thankful that Mamiko knew how to order all of the foods – I’m sure I couldn’t have gotten them correctly.<\/p>\n

After breakfast it was on to the other side of town to try her favorite shorompo<\/a>\u00a0restaurant. \u00a0This was also a home run. \u00a0The restaurant looked like a hole in the wall, and it reminded me a lot of the style of restaurants that you see so often in Asian countries. \u00a0The staff recognized Mamiko and set us up at two tables. \u00a0There we ate a big plate of shorompo and also an egg spiced sandwich that had some pretty unusual flavors. \u00a0It was fun to watch the locals gather in front of the restaurant, and I could tell that this place wasn’t in any guidebook.<\/p>\n

Next stop for us was the inside of Taipei 101, a huge skyscraper in the downtown area that houses lots of shopping as well as offices. \u00a0We went inside and – what else – decided to eat at the food court. \u00a0We ended up choosing some Chinese dishes from a fast food place, but I wasn’t very impressed. \u00a0It is definitely better to eat at the shops on the street. \u00a0We also did some shopping in the afternoon in the building and at a local bookstore.<\/p>\n

The next stop on our gourmet tour was another shaved ice place. \u00a0This one was somewhat famous, called “Ice Monster”, and it had a line formed up in front of it. \u00a0We were able to get a table after ten minutes or so, and it was interesting to note that they had a minimum order for seating inside the restaurant. \u00a0We ended up getting three flavors of shaved ice to share between five people, which was pushing our envelope but we managed to do it. \u00a0The three flavors were Milk tea with tapioca, jasmine tea with lime sorbet, and peanuts with milk. \u00a0All three were really good, but my favorite was the peanut one. \u00a0The nice thing about the shaved ice was that it didn’t seem to fill us up that much, so after eating we were ready to go get dinner somewhere.<\/p>\n

We were aiming for a brewpub nearby, and when we arrived we knew we had the right location because of all the beer kegs decorating the street. \u00a0We went inside, but there were just a few people sitting around on picnic tables drinking beer, and didn’t look anything like the picture we had from the internet. \u00a0We walked around the building thinking we had made a wrong turn, but after taking 15 minutes to walk completely around the block we decided that it must be the right place. \u00a0We went inside, and only then did we hear from the staff that they lost the contract for the restaurant, and now all they had was a beer tap and some alcohol for sale on the floor. \u00a0We took it in stride, however, and ordered some beer to drink on the patio while we planned our next move.<\/p>\n

Since we had such great luck with the night market the previous night, we decided to try another one near our hotel. \u00a0After a quick break at our hotel room we went back out on the road, and after walking for about 20 minutes we found a big city street completely closed off and filled with food stands. \u00a0We walked through the packed stands, and were quickly overwhelmed by all the options. \u00a0We ended up starting with a sit down food stand that had some tables off to the side, where we ordered a variety of local dishes from a menu that even had Japanese on it. \u00a0We had bought our own beers at the local 7-11, so it worked out quite well. \u00a0Mamiko was even carrying some coupons that she had received from the Taipei Tourist Commision. \u00a0They were worth 50 Taiwan dollars each, but if you used them you couldn’t get any change back. \u00a0We soon realized that the shop owners were coveting those coupons (maybe they got paid even more when they turned them in?) and so we ate for free thanks to Mamiko that night.\u00a0Even without eating free the prices everywhere were so low. \u00a0The hotel and food was about 1\/3 what I would expect to pay in Japan, so life was pretty good.<\/p>\n

We ate and ate and ate, and spent probably two hours walking around the market stalking our next meal. \u00a0It was fun to buy whatever you wanted without worrying about the price, and Mamiko always had something else that we had to try. \u00a0Yoshi and Akira were very patient, and helped us eat everything that Mamiko suggested. \u00a0It was a great time. \u00a0Finally we decided that it was time to head on back, so we said our goodnights and goodbyes in the lobby of our hotel, and then went to bed with very full stomachs.<\/p>\n

The next morning we got up around 7 am, and then caught a cab on our own to the airport. \u00a0The Ono family was staying until later that afternoon, so we got a head start back to Japan. \u00a0We arrived at the airport a little early, so we had breakfast there, and it turned out to be a very delicious breakfast of rice gruel with fried bread and peppers, and also \u00a0a steamed bum with egg and teriyaki sauce. \u00a0Even at the restaurant we were able to eat delicious (and cheap) food. \u00a0From there it was a pretty simple trip back to Japan, and we were back home by about 5 pm.<\/p>\n

It was a great trip, and I think that we will probably be back in the future. \u00a0Taiwan is a tropical country, so we have to be very aware of the timing when we go, because it may be too hot or too wet, but we may add it to our list of winter destinations based on how fun, cheap and warm it was. \u00a0All in all, thanks to the Ono family, it was one of our best trips ever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You can see pictures from our trip here. The second day in Taipei we slept in a bit, and then met Yoshi and family in the lobby to head out to their favorite breakfast diner. \u00a0We emerged from the train station and found a line of several hundred people already waiting for breakfast. \u00a0Wow. We […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOpl7-Jq","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2816"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2816\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bryan.fredricks.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}