Sunsets & Serendipity: Taiwan Day 6: Our Typical Tourist day around Yilan

Today was a legit fat day hahaha. Due to the cloudy weather today we didn't go to Tai Ping Shan, so we had a private localised tour of Yilan instead.

Breakfast @ 8.30am: Western meal today!

Fresh pumpkin soya milk that was the bomb, charcoal toast spread with various spreads

And this plate. The eggs were fluffy and wonderful, the sausages were juicy and sweet as per normal for Taiwanese sausages, and the potato cheesy mash was yummy with bits of ham stirred in.

Toasted garlic bread in the centre. The bread was so fluffy!!

And a fruit salad for dessert! Oranges, pink dragon fruit, apple, and baby doumiao all tossed in a sweet yoghurt dressing. So gonna replicate this bowl of deliciousness at home.

Then we headed to the taxi and our unofficial one day tour begun!

First stop: Lanyang museum

Decided to get tickets for the museum

Interactive room where we were provided a commentary of Yilan's geographical beginnings. There were 4 interactive games.

Step the crabs!

Grow the grass!

Ripple the water!

Find the mountains!

The rest of the museum was pretty unremarkable and we briefly looked through.

Back to the cab, and next stop: A random beach

Attempt to look deep and thoughtful

PARANOMA

The beach was unusually....dull coloured and cold but I loved it! The sand was a unique blackish colour(due to the rocks being black and the sand was produced from the rocks)

Most uniformly shaped rocks ever.

After a few pictures, it was time for stop no. 3: some mountaintop cafe place

Chocolate cake (which I didn't eat cos I was stuffed from bfast)

Coffeeeee

Nothing much here, so we went back to the cab and were sent to stop no. 4: a seafood restaurant for some fresh seafood!

Sashimi!!! Yummy. The white radishes at the bottom were given so generously.

FRESH seaweed. Yummy.

Crab vermicelli!! This was so good. And so expensive ( 1500 NT -S$65.20) The broth was gingerly and packed with flavours and the tanghoon absorbed all of the flavours and was way too much for 4 people but thanks to the guys in the fam, we managed ;)

I thought this was fish maw, but just found out a few minutes ago that this is actually fish SPERM. GAH. Served with strips of beef/ pork in an a delicious herbal tasting hunger broth. It was creamy and good, much like the more bitter version of Sea urchin. Now only if I didn't just find out it was fish sperm.....

Complementary aiyu jelly! what a wonderful refreshing end to the meal. Love jellies.

Stop no. 5: some seaside rocky park

Quite gorgeous scenery and nothing to special happened (except mommy briefly got lost haha)

Next up: (now this is where the trip started becoming more of a food tour)

Black pig sausages recommended by the bus driver!

Juicy and sweet

Tasted great with fresh garlic

We also got ice cream!!!

Black glutinous rice, taro, and I'm not too sure what flavour

Peanut, red bean, and I don't know what flavour.

I love Taiwanese ice creams coz they aren't creamy and taste real authentic! These were awesome :)

-stopped a kumquat/ preserved fruit museum which I didn't take any pics of. Good tea-

Next up we wanted to find a bakery to find some good cakes and breads so the driver brought us to some huge cake factory/ shop called Dr ren or something?

Behind the scenes

Red bean doriyaki we sampled as we entered! Yummy! We unabashedly went back for seconds (Thick skinned haha)

Banana cake? Soft and spongy :)

Castella cake! Green tea, cheese and red bean flavours. It was as soft as a cloud and so yummy. People were attacking the samples like ants to sweets.

We didn't buy anything and just took advantage of the array of free samples hehe ;)

Kiam kiam shop with more free samples!

Bought a few types

The entire shop was studded with seashells! Even the toilet section.

I was full of bursting but there was more food to come as we hadn't tried the duck meat Yilan is so famous for.

Stopped by a shop recommended by the cabby again.

Duck's blood cake! Tasted like pig's blood cake.

Duck. Served with chilli sauce. The duck was pretty lean and probably smoked.

Some noodles

Bee hoon

Fishball and duck blood soup garnished with spring onions

Cute dog

Last foodie stop: stopped to get meat filled soup buns (which were slightly different from xiaolongbao as the skin was harder) still good though and apparently very popular!