Today was a super busy day and right now I'm just slumped in the seat of the hotel room with my whole body aching like hell haha.
We woke up at 7+ am today and left the hotel at about 9, in search for Yonghe Doujiang, the quintessential breakfast place in Taiwan :)
Love the early morning weather in Taiwan!!
Finally after asking around for directions from kind strangers, we found our place. I would have though such a well established chain restaurant would look more...modern but this restaurant looked like any ole unassuming shophouse you might find tucked in an ulu corner.
People busy at work cutting out dough etc for the bustling breakfast crowd.
We made our way into the tiny shop and managed to find 4 seats, fortunately!!
4 soya milks (mid sweet and tasted real authentic) ; youtiao (tasted so light it felt like eating crispy nothingness); pork floss wrapped in egg (yum one of my favs); and savoury douhua!!! (Didn't taste like douhua at all tbh, more like a tofu soup)
Pork floss encased in a crispy sesame seed crusted shaobing :) this was good.
Some crunchy thingy wrapped in glutinous rice. We mistakenly ordered it w/o pork floss so it didn't taste as good as it should :P
A basket of xiaolongbao; hardly any soup with a thick doughy casing. Meh.
After eating our fill of the breakfast, we walked back to the station.
Roasted sweet potatoes!!! We were stuffed but who can resist freshly roasted piping hot sweet potatoes on a cold morning??? These were huge and delicious <3
Such vivid colours ahhhh
Then we boarded the train from the nearby station(forgot the name) and took a 20 min train ride to Beitou station, and then to Xin Beitou.
Cute structure at the Mrt station- xinbeitou is a famous hot spring location so even the train was hot spring themed!!! So cool!!!
From there we took a bus (230) to Yangmingshan. It was an unexpectedly tiny coach filled with old people :P
Finally we reached YMS!!!
Walked around randomly for a couple of hours and enjoyed the scenery.
Then we took bus 9 to Beitou station
Sushi from a store at the mrt
We then proceeded to take a train to Guangdu where we rented tandem bikes to ride to our final destination: Tamsui!! (It's actually 淡水 but I have no idea why it's spelled like that)
Momsie and I on one bike, Dad and bro on another.
The scenery on the way was beautiful!!!!
That's dad and bro in front
After a mere 40 minutes or so, we reached Tamsui!!! It looked nothing like what I expected.... Perhaps I expected someplace more rural??? But this looked like a well developed city which I felt secretly happy about :P
V for Victory!!!
We returned our bikes and walked to the street areas.
Ahhhh usual scene in Taiwan so far: lanes selling nothing but food and clothes. I really liked the 'feel' of this area :)
Deep fried squid babyyyyy!! Since Tamsui is a seaside town, they sold lots of squid and seafood :)
This was damn yummy mmmmmm
This place was also famous for their 阿给 (ahgei) which is basically fried tofu (or fish cake???) stuffed with vermicelli and drenched in a mouthwatering sweetish-sour sauce.
3 Ahgeis plus one bowl of their signature homemade fish balls!!!
Yummmms I loved the sauce :)
Hungry bro tucking in
The fishball was stuffed with meat!!! Other than that nothing special haha.
Mom wanted to try 臭豆腐 (stinky tofu) so we did!! This wasn't stinky and it just tasted like regular fried tofu slathered in a sweet sauce and topped with a few pickled veggies. Hmmm it was nice but nothing special haha.
PINK GUAVAAAAAAA!!!!
Mmmmmm yummy, I think this was sprinkled in some plum powder but it was delicious nonetheless!
We also ordered some drinks before which I didn't take a photo of hehe but we were stopping like every few stalls to eat something!!
After a bit of walking we decided to go to the beach front to enjoy the sunset (which, being winter is about 5am)
BEAUTIFUL.
Meanwhile dad and I went to find steamed squid. It was lightly salted, fresh and yummy!! I think I totally overdosed on squid today blerghh.
Back to the (almost) setting sun!
We bought a matcha ice cream which was supposed to be already a 'small' size. The big one was huge!!! (But we're planning to try it next time ha) this ice cream was so good!!! It wasn't overly creamy and tasted light as a feather with a hint of pleasant green tea flavour and a crunchy cone base. Really liked it!!!
Squid ink sausage that was black as night. Tasted like the usual sweet Taiwanese pork kind :P
Ahhhh this is the traditional pig's blood cake I wanted to try before!!!(coated in a spicy sauce, peanuts and corriander) It was so huge, and every bit as delicious as I wanted it to be <3 so gonna eat this everyday if I can. Yesterday's paled horribly in comparison.
MORE FRIED SEAFOOD.
Mini fried shrimps.
More fried squid. This was a different, softer part of the squid compared to the one we had before and I liked this better!!! (Totally OD-ed on fried food today gasps)
Some pastries. Dad bought the pumpkin and taro one I think.
Following that when we were quite tired and bought some souvenirs, we decided to head to Shilin Night Market for a quick taste of the most famous market in Taiwan.
One of the first stalls we saw- the fruit stall!!!! The lady handed out some samples and all of them were SO DAMN SWEET. So we bought all that she let us try and it came up to a whopping 650 NT (~S$30+) OMG. Lesson learnt.
Our legs were so dead, we decided to try a proper oyster Mee sua (and sit at the same time). Yummy.
We then headed down to B1 to check out Shilin food court. It was huge and bustling with people and every bit the foodie's heaven. The sounds of sizzling omelettes and frying and the smell of the different foods blended together was just... woah.
Dad got attracted to this popiah stall!
Basically fried stuff seasoned in your flavour of choice and wrapped in popiah skin. Very healthy.
Paranoma of the market!
The popiah thingy itself. Dad got black pepper which was... Meh. Black pepper taste was hardly evident and the fried stuff was practically tasteless. Don't get why the queue was so damn long for this.
We got out of the exceedingly crowded market and back into the streets.
Fried milk!!!! It tasted slightly bitter to me but oh well, maybe it's just my screwed up tastebuds from all the non-stop eating.
Finally we took the train back to Taipei station and home sweet home. End of a productive day (in the holiday sense). tomorrow: JIUFEN!!!! Looking forward to the taro balls hehe
CIAO FELLAS.
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