Taipei 101

March 11, 2011

Simon getting his groove on!

We met up with Grandma Chung for breakfast at the home of soybean milk.

But actually we didn’t think it was very good. The traditional way is to have the soybean milk with a bit of burnt taste, not pleasant tasting to me. The other breakfast items on their menu weren’t that tasty either so not sure if we’d ever go back to this place again. We went to catch the MRT to go to some shopping areas.

Simon went to a Mitsukoshi Department Store and Simon had his first experience with trying on shoes.

We bought him these pair of blue sneaker-like shoes. The brand is IFME (Japanese) and very well designed. It has velcro on each side of the shoe so you can tighten on both sides so his shoes will stay on tightly. We ended up buying a little bigger size to accommodate socks and his growing feet. I think they are 17cm.

In the toy department, Simon saw a model train set and started saying “chugga chugga”. He’s kind of quiet in the video.

Then we headed to Xi Men Ding to do some shopping. On our walk there we stopped by to have this meat pie. It’s pretty amazing to watch them make it since they stuff so much filling into it. It’s super hot and delicious when you buy it fresh.

At Xi Men Ding, I found these super cute shoes… and in my size! I have the white pair.

We walked around and did some shopping. It was a bit drizzly but at least not raining cats and dogs. We stopped by to have some noodles for a late lunch. This is when we saw the news of the big earthquake that hit Japan. We were lucky to not be affected and relatives in Hualien were unharmed. The footage of the aftermath was amazing and alarming at the same time. Only time will tell how much damage was really done but we hope that relief will come soon for the survivors.

Then we headed back to the hotel area and while walking around to buy diapers, we encountered this stinky tofu stand.

A little pre-dinner snack of stinky tofu and Taiwan beer.

Then we headed to Taipei 101 to have dinner with the Ou-Yangs, founder of ANKO, Ron’s parents work with them. They also invited my parents to join for dinner. We took the MRT near Taipei 101 and ended up walking a few blocks to the actual building. It was a foggy and drizzly evening.

We had dinner on the 85th floor at Shin Yeh, a Taiwanese food restaurant. It’s a bit confusing to find the elevators so it’s best to ask someone. We entered through the mall, had to go to the 4th floor, then take elevators to the 2nd floor, then check-in before they would allow us to the elevators to the 60th floor, and finally took another set of elevators to the 85th floor. We had quite the meal there.

Pickled grapes, Cucumbers, and ?. Appetite stimulating.

Chilled, braised abalone, pork sausage, and mullet roe roulade.

Double boiled fish maw with dried scallop, chicken, pork ribs, and mushroom.

Golden fried king prawn dressed with shrimp mousse and almond slices (it looks kind of like a koi fish to me)

Steamed fillet of cod fish with scallion and sweet soy sauce.

Wok fried pea sprouts with sun dried scallops.

Steamed glutinous rice dumpling.

Seasonal fresh fruits and a pineapple cake.

Sweetened almond “tofu” with peaches in syrup. I think they wrote “tofu” in parenthesis because this was actually tofu “jelly”.

Simon was a very good boy during the dinner. Other than he convinced Mrs. Ou-Yang to give him her strawberries from her vegetarian dish and then running around the room because he was bored… he was good by normal standards.