Continued from Taichung Day 1 & 2.

Taipei Day 1

Traveling day today, not looking forward to it. RL, PL and I will head up to Taipei by ourselves. What will we do in Taipei…we don’t quite know. I think I’d be more willing to make excursions outside of the city to the surrounding areas if there wasn’t so much rain in the forecast. It’s hard to be outside in the rain with a baby.

Everyday here starts with breakfast, baby included.

Holy Comb Over! Seriously dude…just cut it off.

Skype with white grandma and grandpa. PL kept on reaching into the screen, silly baby.

While PL took her first nap of the day, I came down to the lobby to use up some more of my drink tickets…doh, it’s too early and the lobby bar isn’t open yet. I did see this nice looking Bentley parked out front. It was driven by an older short skinny dude who was probably 50, but dressed like he was in his 20s and in a punk rock band. His wife/girlfriend/mistress was young in her 20s. They also had a young toddler with them. How did they fit a car seat in that car you ask? They don’t, baby sits on mama’s lap in the front seat. Sigh…all that money and no sense. Car seats aren’t required in Taiwan, but mopeds are required to wear helmets…

After doing some blogging down in the lobby I came back up to the room, PL is still sleeping. Since the room has to be kept dark, I had to eat my delicious egg pudding in the bathroom. No spoon, no problem, I’ll just use one of my daughter’s spoons to feed myself!

ZZZzzzzz…yes baby, sleep!!

Again, still raining. It’s noon, PL just woke up from her nap, now is our window to get going.

Got in a cab with all of our luggage to take us to the high speed rail station. Pouring rain.

Banana!

Really pouring rain!!

Ugh, this isn’t going to be fun. We’ve got a lot of luggage, this is going to suck. We’ve got my main pack, RL’s main pack with her day pack strapped to it, baby’s diaper backpack, a car seat inside duffel bag, and the baby herself. I’ve got the baby in front, my main pack on my back and carrying the bag with the carseat in it. RL has her mainpack/day pack on her back and the giant diaper bag in front. So heavy!!

Still pouring rain outside. Hopefully the trains won’t be delayed.

Everything is much heavier than it looks. My main pack also doesn’t have a frame, so most of the weight is just resting on my shoulders. My back!!! RL has it just as bad as well!

Lunch spot, we’ll just grab something to eat on the train.

Interesting minimalist carrier for my bento box.

Despite the downpour, the train was only 3 minutes late. Our shoulders were dying standing on the platform waiting for the train to arrive. They had an announcement for the imminent arrival of the train, except almost 10 long minutes went by before the train actually pulled into the station. 10 minutes that felt like an hour.

Ahhh, bullet train baby!

Love bento boxes that they sell at train stations, so nostalgic.

Not much to see during the ride except for the rainy weather.

In an hour, we’ve arrived at Taipei. Time to get in a taxi and head to our hotel. It’s such a pain having to take the baby out from the carrier and switch her into a carseat.

Banana!!!

Banana?

Raining up here in Taipei too.

Finally arrived! Such a relief, now we can put all of our luggage down.

This is what $160 a night gets you in central Taipei. Usually costs more, but my dad gets a discount rate for staying in this hotel chain so much.

That’s a nice bathroom, appreciate the double vanity.

Even has a sitting area, sweet.

Best part of the hotel, 7 Eleven literally right next door!

Ahhh, must stock up on various goods. Egg puddings!!!

We all need a nap after traveling…ZZZzzzzz.

It’s 5pm now, time for dinner. Damn rain, stop already.

Fortunately, the way to the subway is mostly covered by arcades under the buildings.

Nice! Immediately when I get on the subway, a guy offers me his seat because I’m carrying a baby. Heh.

So many stairs, and also carrying a baby. My back is starting to hurt. All those luggages and with the baby in front all the time after so many days, it’s taking a toll on me.

You know it, dinner spot. Din Tai Fung!

There’s a short 10 min wait, no problem.

I wonder if these kids cups are for sale here?

If you’ve been to a DTF before, you’ll know how great it is. If you haven’t been to one, visit one!

After dinner, another quick run to the corner store to stock up. They even sell baked sweet potatoes here!

Ohhh, green tea soft serve!

Wait, the color doesn’t look right…it was more milk than green tea. Poop.

So exhausted, and all we did was travel from Taichung to Taipei. Every day is exhausting with this little animal, but so so cute. Time to call it a night.

Taipei Day 2

Our plan for Taipei today is…actually we are not sure. The only necessary thing that we need to do today is laundry, so we’ll do that first chance we get in the morning…then we’ll play it by ear in the afternoon.

Breakfast coupon means fancy breakfast buffet.

Not interested in eating her food at all, but super interested in eating the pouch that her food came in.

Ahhh, this is the best. Marinated pork belly stew on top of rice. Traditional Taiwanese fare, so good.

Blurry, but on the back label of the baby food that we bought it HK, it mentions that this baby food is Carbon Neutral. WTF…seriously? Maybe they should mention that having a human baby is probably one of the most carbon adding things that a person can do. That child will grow up to be an adult, and fly on airplanes, drive a car, eat food, fart, and all that creates carbon….Also it’s non GMO, even though there isn’t anything wrong with GMO…Such fear mongering with baby products.

After breakfast, time for laundry. I couldn’t stomach the high prices for laundry in the hotel, so I managed to find a coin laundry semi nearby, 15 min walk or so.

The original food trucks. Don’t understand the food truck craze in America, as food trucks have been around for probably centuries.

Finally arrived, it’s tucked behind that row of mopeds.

Across from the laundromat, there’s a shop that sells nothing but fruits.

Alright, let’s see how I work these machines. I ended up asking the lady who was already doing laundry to teach me how to work these machines. She was very nice and was super helpful!

So much laundry, filled up almost my entire main pack.

Alright, 37min for the wash cycle. PL started losing it, so RL went back to the the hotel with her. I’ll stick around, maybe find a coffee shop and blog.

Let’s see, there should be a coffee shop around here.

There is, but it isn’t open. There are all these business in Taiwan that seems to have random hours.

Lots of mom and pop small eateries around here.

Walked by this, they don’t have wifi, but they’ve got desserts and milk teas!

Feed me!

No wifi, no problem, I’ll go old school with my hard copy of the Economist!

Time for the dry cycle. I also noticed that there’s a steel door that leads up to the residences upstairs. Kind of a cool business to own, probably not that much maintenance and you don’t need to man your shop.

Feels great to have clean laundry again…except, I realized that I forgot to wash a pair of jeans. Oops.

After laundry, chilled at the hotel for a bit and now it’s time for lunch. Saw this by the elevator window. How did that giant backhoe get on top of that building? They must have broken it down into sections and craned it up there.

Saw this in the hotel lobby for sale. It’s a massager…but come on, it looks like a penis with balls. RL is the one who pointed this out to me, so blame her.

Weather is dry, let’s see how long it lasts.

A short walk from our hotel is a rotating sushi place, this shall be lunch.

We walked into the restaurant, and they asked us if we’ve been here before, to which we answered no. Then they gave us this long spiel about how everything works blah blah blah. At one point, I said, “We just came to eat…”.

The reason for the spiel, it’s a fancy rotating sushi place. You have your regular rotating sushi, and on top there’s a screen where you can order specific items, which gets sent to you via a separate conveyer belt. Then after you eat a certain plates of food, you can play some sort of game on the screen to win some sort of prize…but I stopped paying attention during that portion of the spiel.

The sushi are also under these containers, and you need to lift the plates a certain way for it to open.

I ordered some food off the touchscreen and it arrives to our table using the separate conveyer belt. This is kind of neat.

You also dispense the empty plates into this receptacle, and it counts up the plates, which gets displayed on the touchpad screen.

Not her first rodeo, but still amused.

Gotta have my green tea ice cream. This was pretty good.

After lunch, and on our way back to our hotel, we were lured into this bakery by the smell. Yum!!

Teaching PL how to blow raspberries with her lips. She’s slowly getting it, and it’s hilarious, to us at least.

4 hours and a nap sometime in there, it’s time to head out and explore the area around our hotel a little. On the taxi ride to our hotel, RL noticed an area nearby that seems to have a lot of shops selling knick knacks, so we’ll be looking for that.

Interesting name choice…

Found the shops, they sell nothing but jade…meh.

So much greenery over here.

That building is some sort of marketplace, let’s have a look.

It’s an entire building filled with nothing by small stalls selling electronic goods. Just stall after stall in 5 different floors all selling more or less the same thing. How do all these shops survive?

We should have known that it was an entire place filled with electronics goods when 95% of the people in here are guys.

That’s one cramped shop!

This shop sells nothing but replacement batteries.

It’s mid April, and they’ve still got their Christmas decor up. At this point, you might as well leave it up all year and use it for the upcoming Christmas…8 months from now.

On the walk back to hotel, walked by this store that sells nothing but ping pong related items.

Stopped by a coffee shop around hotel, gotta have my caffeine. So tired.

I took a photo of RL, which didn’t turn out well. So then she made this expression on the next photo…This is the better of the two.

OK, baby is losing it, back to our hotel. PL has been squealing at the top of her lungs whenever she’s tired. Sigh. Good thing the other patrons still find her cute.

Saw this at 7-Eleven. Self contained shots. Seriously, one can have an awesome party just shopping at the 7-Eleven.

Too exhaust to go back out for dinner. RL sent me out to get some dinner, and I just got it from the coffee shop nearby. This will do, this will do. Must sleep.

To be continued at Taipei Day 3 & 4.