Taichung

  I had a week off in between my winter and spring semesters, so I decided to head down to Taichung and Alishan. I'll get to Alishan later, and just cover Taichung for now.

I wanted to escape cold, wet, dreary Taipei for something a little more vibrant. I never thought I'd get tired of Taipei - and I still love it - but there is such thing as too much of a good thing (and too much bad weather). Taichung was perfect: cool air, warm sun, pretty flowers...

  

Also, food. So much food. My first night in Taichung, I got dinner with one of the other travelers in my hostel. She was from Hong Kong and worked as a reporter for the Apple Daily. We got goose (which is a local specialty apparently?), some tasty greens, and salmon sashimi, which makes me wonder how I could have ever been afraid of raw fish.

My second day, I got lunch at a vegetarian restaurant with some of my dad's coworkers from Hong Kong and one of their Taiwanese colleagues. I then spent the rest of the day meandering through the city, admiring the architecture (parts of Taichung remind me of Paris actually, which I totally hadn't anticipated), and finally hitting my ultimate destination: Feng Chia Night Market...Beijing duck steamed bread sandwich, roasted sausage with garlic cloves, magical oreo mystery drink...it was amazing.

Not only did my dad's colleagues take me out to the vegetarian restaurant, but once they found out I had never been to Din Tai Fung (a popular Taiwanese chain with a Michelin star famous for their xiaolongbao, soup dumplings), they insisted on taking me there too. There are a couple locations in Taipei as well, but I just never had the inclination to go wait in line when there are more easily accessible (and cheaper) xiaolongbao close to where I live. In any case, Din Tai Fung was amazing. I'm getting hungry again just thinking about it...

I also hit up a place called Gong Yuan Eye Clinic (宫原眼科), which sells baked goods, chocolate, and ice cream! Basically, it's catering to me. The building itself is also really cool (it used to be an eye clinic...hence the name), and products are placed in a way that makes you feel like you're walking through a library of baked goods. Sadly, you can't just take things down and start eating...

I'm always agonizing when it comes to make menu choices but this might have been one the greatest decision struggles of my life:

The non-chocolaty flavors did not present as much of a temptation to me (except for maybe grapefruit) but the colors were really pretty. I also got really excited when I got to the toppings case: cheesecake, honey, caramel, nuts, and other little cakes. Sadly, due to a language misunderstanding (I thought the word for topping was scoop...my bad...we obviously need to cover more dessert vocab at ICLP), I only got to order one topping. Caramel. Not my first choice, but when I got started, I thought my options were limitless...

The ice cream was pretty good - I ordered the Mexican 70% - but next time I might order a flavor with a higher concentration of cocoa. I didn't think it was chocolatey enough. I also got honey flavored taiyang (sun) cakes, which Taichung is famous for, to give out as gifts to people back in Taipei. Personally, I prefer the local treats from Jiayi but I did not realize that till later...beside which, I'll be giving these away, so it's probably best I'm not crazy about them, as to avoid devouring them before they get to the people they are intended for...

 

 I really liked Taichung, so I was sad to leave, but Alishan was calling...