May 2017 - Taipei

As I started looking at the pictures I took last month, I realized the only pictures I took before our trip to Taipei were of food :).

Saturday morning latte art breakfast (became a habit)

Sunday morning breakfast at Australian Dairy Company - famous breakfast place in our hood.

Dinner on the street at Temple Street Night Market.  

Lunch Scramble at work - local spicy noodles.

Gwen's team Happy Hour (it is Target and some things are the same everywhere).

More Latte art.

Gwen took a week work trip to China - Shanghai and Shaoxing.  Again more food and a lot of fabric.

At the end of May, we had the Dragon Boat holiday, so we decided to get out of town and check out Taipei, Taiwan. 

We even had a Dragon Boat to greet us at our hotel.

The weather was not great Saturday, so we decided to check out the city via the Big Bus tour (new to Taipei).

Before the weather turned, we saw Taipei 101 from a few angles.

 Some other highlights from the bus.

We found a a Japanese restaurant for lunch and had amazing ramen... It's not like the instant noodles we all ate in college.

Saturday night we had a tour of the Shlin Night Market, and luckily the weather cleared up.  We had a great time and ate some of the local dishes.

Large sausages and fruit.

 Oyster pancakes and Octopus soup.

Apparently all Night Markets in Taipei have 3 things: food, shopping and games.  It's more like a fair in the US.  Here are some of the games and food.

 Wheel cakes made to order and some amazing herbal tea.

Sunday we ventured off to Maokung to ride the gondola up the mountain for views of Taipei  and drink local tea.

The cable car starts near the Taipei Zoo - so there is an animal theme.

Views on the ride up.  The cable car stops 2 times on the way up to see parts of the zoo.  Off in the distance there is a smoke stack painted as a giraffe.

And what is a ride in a cable car with a crystal bottom without toe pictures.

 Toes over tea.

After we got to the top and started walking around we saw some pretty impressive bicycles.  Taiwan has a very strong cycling culture.  The riders were taking a tea break.  If you saw the ride up, you'd be impressed too...  We got excited for our bike tour the next day.

And of course we kept seeing Taipei 101 (tallest building in the world from 2004 - 2009).  It is a stand out in the skyline.

 We found a cute tea shop on the slopes and did an official tasting.

We had some tea Ice Cream and did some shopping.  There is a cat theme here.

On the ride down, we saw a few new things.

 Some more pictures from the gondola ride down.

Lots of pandas....

Sunday ended with a tour of Taipei 101.  

Views of Taipei from the 91st Floor observatory.

There is a 660 tonne (~1.3 Million Pound) steel counterweight (tuned mass damper) between the 87th - 92nd floors.  The video they show of it moving during typhoon Soudelor is impressive.

 Here are some shots of us (and our guide) on the tour.

We watched the sunset over Taipei while eating dinner on the 35th floor.  We, lucked out with amazing weather.

We posed with the LOVE sculpture.

This is a shot back up to where we were earlier.  We did some FaceTime chatting with family with this view in the background.

Monday was our bike tour of tea plantations.  

We found this guy at one of our rest stops - he was not going near as fast as we were on our way down the mountain, and no we didn't eat it.

Some views.

We rode (sloooooowly) about 35 km up a mountain and then zipped back down.  After that, We had a local lunch cooked with tea leaves and tea oils and visited a Tea Museum.

We thought we were done riding (Patrick pigged out at lunch), but then we did another 2.5 km ride along a river through some tea fields.  Thank heavens this ride was short and flat.

Saw a local fisherman.

On our way back to Taipei we took little "secret" roads (by car) through a tea plantation to the top of a mountain, so we could get a great view of the famous island in a lake in the shape of a crocodile (no real crocodiles) and have more local tea.  We (of course) bought more tea and some tea oil.  We're excited to try the tea oil.  Our lunch was great, and apparently it's healthier than olive oil, but who knows.

For dinner Monday night, we found a local place for Beef Noodle soup.  We got the recommendation from our Night Market guide.  There is a reason everyone says it's a "must try"; it's amazing!

We felt like we deserved dessert, so we found some famous Mango Shaved Snow and Ice - specifically panna cotta and mango.

We found some local signs to put things in perspective.  We were 801 km (498 mi) from home in Hong Kong and 12,627 (7,846 mi) from the US (don't know where specifically).

On Tuesday, our last day, we celebrated the Dragon Boat festival.  A part of the tradition is to eat sticky rice.  The story is a bit morbid, but you can look it up if you'd like.  

We couldn't go to Taipei without eating at the original Din Tai Fung (one of our favorite restaurants) location - a few blocks from our hotel.  So, we popped in for lunch before we headed off to the airport.