taipei weekend

Last weekend, we headed to Taipei, Taiwan, for a little R&R. It was my first time and I loved it! It was a great mix of modern design, tropical flavor, and city community all blended together.

We met up with Sue, my good pal from CCA and headed to the SongShan cultural park to visit the Taiwan Design Museum.

They had a Barbie exhibit- a private collection of every Barbie ever made (?) It was fascinating, impressive, and creepy all at the same time. Fascinating that they had so many extremely detailed outfits and accessories, and basically every imaginable personality and more. The 1970's delta airplane interior playset, a princess for every culture that ever existed AND more, and also celebs like Michael Jackson and Michelle Obama.  Even the above creepy mustache doll.

A late lunch outside- a typhoon was coming so it was quite windy. We went to Chun Shui Tang, notorious for their naicha (milktea) with beef noodles and 萝卜糕 lobakgo. YUMMY!! Milk Houses, by Taipei 101 is known for their cream bun- which is basically filled with butter!!!!

Then headed to Taipei 101, once the tallest building in the world (2004) 449.2 m. (For comparison, SH's WFC is 494.3 m) As it was a Sunday afternoon, there was a 1 hr wait. Nearby we also checked out the very cool Eslite bookstore - which was several floors combining fashion and designy pop-up shops, and books. Timon: This is a bookstore? Where are the books?

 Raohe + Shilin night market. Raohe had more food, and shilin  was twice the size but had mostly clothes. Cheap clothes- like $5 usd racks of  Polyester neon tops and a 100 TWD shop.

 Above images show a dessert crepe filled with peanut toffee shavings and fruit ice cream. 

Handmade food, on right, we are playing this traditional pinball-like game. You use a plastic ruler to flick metal balls up and try to get them to line up horizontally or vertically to get a prize. We just won root beer candy.

Custard in egg shells, Taiwanese pineapple and mango beer, and corndogs covered in french fries.

5 dime boat house resturant: paper mache cavern and iron anemones in a Gaudi-meets-Simon Rodia style. The artist/architect of the restaurant is Xie Li-xiang who was inspired by drift wood, and desiring to upcycle it into art. The ENTIRE resturant is doused in details of enormous proportions. Huge anemones and stautes mounted all over- you really have to watch where you are walking! The cuisine was traditional Taiwanese fare.  here

We also visited the Palace museum- which was huge, and very well done. Great english descriptors, arrows to help traffic flow, and docent roping off areas so they wouldn't get too crowded. It farther up north and we had to take a cab there (no metro), but only 5 min from where we were staying in Jian nan.

We headed to Beitou in the evening to visit the hotsprings. It was about 35 minutes from the Palace museum (both north of where we were staying) We didn't have a place in mind, so we asked the cabbie for a recommendation. For ordering about $12 USD of food per person, (Tempura platter, BBQ beef, and veggies) we got unlimited time in a private hotspring! It was a little room with a stone tub, with faucet for the hot spring to fill it up directly!

We LOVE the tripadvisor app- so well thought out and tremendously helpful!
We stayed in Jian Nan metro area, via Airbnb- a newer neighborhood, very residential/commercial which meant it was very quite but also no street snacks, and even fewer cabs. Fortunately, the mall nearby had a free shuttle to Shilin night market!

In hindsight, we should've flown in Songshan airport, which was much closer to town- and metro accessible.