Continued from Taiwan Day 2.

As mentioned earlier, I suck at this jet lag thing. Wanted to sleep in, but woke up at 1am in the morning after about 3 hours of sleep. Not cool. Blogged some, then laid in bed, and eventually fell asleep…for a little bit at least.

Finally, it’s almost 6:30am, time for breakfast downstairs. Before heading down, I am going to have a prebreakfast of egg pudding in the room. This thing is the best!

OC, isn’t this the Hello Kitty plane that you took to Indonesia recently?

We did not have a whole line of eateries lined up for later today, so I plan on just getting the most out of our breakfast buffet.

More duck, don’t mind if I do.

We are checking out of our hotel in Taichung, and heading to Taipei up North.

Down at lobby waiting for my sister to come pick us up.

Another childhood favorite, shrimp flavored chips.

Oh no, a scooter accident.

That does not look happy. There were no bodies laying around so I assume the injuries were minor.

It’ll take us close to 2.5 hours to drive to Taipei. It’s around 10 in the morning, but it feels really late in the day since I’ve been up for so long already.

The landmark of Taipei, Taipei 101.

We parked around Taipei 101 to have lunch nearby.

Rotating Sushi Restaurant!!!! I LOVE THESE PLACES!!

So good, and so fresh!

How much you pay at the end of the meal is calculated by how many plates of each color you’ve got.

Satisfied!

And now prompt jet lag. We need coffee to keep us going.

A vending machine that sells sauces. How stingy to not give out sauces for free.

Life.

RL is still stuck on buying a slip, so we visited the underwear section of Uniqlo, a floor above the restaurant.

10 minutes of talking about the different colors of underwear and pajamas between RL and my sister, then we walked out empty handed. Yawn. Let’s head to our hotel so we can chill out for a bit.

Our home for the next 3 nights in Taipei.

Very nice. When we were booking for our hotel in Taipei, we had a lot of trouble finding a reasonably priced hotel in Taipei. Apparently, this week there is some sort of big conference going on, so all the hotels in the city were full. This is what $150 a night gets you in Taipei, not too bad. My sister reserved the hotel for me, and this is a special rate only available to Taiwanese residents. We lucked out.

Unpacked, sat around and felt tired. No, must get up and move around, fight jet lag and not fall asleep.

Heading out towards Taipei 101, close to where we had lunch. RL and I are on our own now, so we headed to the subway station.

Found the subway.

Nevermind. Found an underground cross walk.

Here we go, this is more like it.

Easy breezy.

Not too bad, not crowded.

Oh cool, we found seats!…nevermind, we found a seat. Some woman had an accident in the seat next to RL…gross.

These pictures kept on changing by flipping like the old school train announcement boards.

Out of the subway and the first thing we see is Din Tai Fung, a Michelin Star rated restaurant. This is my friend RE’s favorite restaurant in Taiwan, or perhaps the whole world. RE also happens to be in Taiwan right now, so we plan on meeting up with him and his family when we get a chance.

Up we go to the observatory.

Why are these always breaking? I don’t get it.

Not the most flattering photo, but it’ll have to do.

High end shopping mall on the way to the observatory elevators.

Long line, they said it was a 30 minutes wait.

In order to get to the end of the line, we had to walk past tons electronics stalls.

Finally to the elevator. They were right, it took 30 minutes. They claim that this is the world’s fastest elevator. I am surprised that none of the newer skyscrapers have topped this yet. Anyhow, it was indeed super fast. In about the time it takes for me to get from my parking garage to the 9th floor at home, here it gets me from ground floor to 89th floor.

Not the best day for viewing. It smoggy and looks like it’s about to rain.

Giant wind damper on the top to reduce swaying.

There’s an outdoor viewing area. What was interesting was that the winds would blow through the metal bar enclosure surrounding the perimeter, and the bars would whistle ever so slightly depending on how the wind was blowing.

Well, that’s that, let’s head back down.

They force you to walk past a bunch of red coral shops on the way down.

When we got down to the ground, we decided to meet up with my friend RE to grab a bite to eat. His hotel is not too far from here.

No idea what this is about, but they were noisy and annoying.

Too lazy to take the MRT(subway) and walk around trying to find RE’s hotel. Taxi it is.

That was easy, RE’s hotel is straight ahead after a quick short taxi ride.

That’s really close to the curb, and also in the fire lane, along with most of the cars parked on this street.

Enjoying a beer with RE, LT, and their super cute daughter S. Apparently S gets all the attention here in Taiwan being a mixed race baby and all. RE showed me a photo of a whole gaggle of girls crowding around S wanting to take a photo with her. She’s a little celebrity.

We sat around, had a beer, chatted a little. RL and I are fading, we need to eat and head back to the hotel to sleep.

Cool looking building for a school.

It started to sprinkle a little.

Oh, I recognize this area. I believe my sister took me to eat at a restaurant around here years back.

Found our dinner spot, a 24 hour dim sum place.

RE said that one of the review said that this place was like “The Denny’s of dim sum” in that it was 24 hours. Let’s see how it tastes.

Food was pretty solid, I’d eat again. Yum.

Other patrons agree with us. The place got pretty packed as we ate our meal.

Group photo. The guy standing on the right is LT’s cousin who met us for dinner.

RE and LT picked up the tab for us as their wedding gift to us. Thanks y’all!

MRT ride back to our stop. Standing room only.

Back to the hotel, quick shower, then blog…screw that, I am going straight to bed.

To be continued at Taiwan Day 4.