(Continues from here)

♥Dec 2nd – Drizzle/飘雨的台北♥
My collague, Teresa, came to the hotel to meet us. Somehow, Zara and her ‘clicked’, and the rest of the day, they were glued together (oh well, Teresa was looking after Zara for me).

Because it was drizzling, our plan of going to the zoo has to be changed. We went to the National Palace Museum (故宮博物院) instead which was packed with tourists who came in bus load.

Zara showed lots of interest in the artifacts, reading the didactic to learn more about them, not Zaria though.

However, both were intrigued by this longish painting from 1085-1145, which is 528cm long capturing the daily life of people from the Song period at the capital. It’s called Along the River During the Qingming Festival (清明上河圖).

You can view the animated River of Wisdom, to see why it’s so interesting for the girls.

(No cameras are allowed in the museum, so no photos of the artifacts)

Teresa bought us a simple lunch at the Museum Cafe (delicious!) and then we went to Shinkong Mitsukoshi. The Taipei Station branch there was having an aniversary sales, and I don’t know why, I didn’t buy anything even with the good discount. o.O”

Teresa bought us dinner as well in Shinkong Mitsukoshi, and got the girls some presents. The girls said Teresa took care of them like their Gu-ma(姑妈), and called her their Taiwan Gu-ma. o.O”

In the night, after we parted with Teresa, we went to Shida Night Market again (師大夜市) since it’s so near the hotel.

Trendy boutiques to cater for university students are every where. This one has some rocking horses at the shop front.

Another funky shop.

The display window.

Bubble tea is sold everywhere, this one has miniature samplers.

A nightmarket can’t do without some stalls selling food. This old man was burning grilling some corn.

Eww. Pig’s blood cake.

Tangyuan (Glutinous rice balls) shop where we had 2 bowls of tangyuan from. Maybe because they do tangyuan with pork too, the sweet tangyuan we had tasted a bit porky. o.O”

♥Dec 3rd – Sunny/放晴♥
After a day of drizzling, it was sunny. Lucky for us, because we’d made plans to meet up with my collagues at Bali (八里), a seaside town near Tanshui (淡水).

We took the metro to Guandu (關渡), one of my colleagues, Iris, met us there, and then together, we took a cab to To House (兔子餐廳), and met up with the rest of my collagues.

To House (八里兔子餐廳) is a theme family restaurant with a compound housing lots of rabbits.

Healthy looking rabbit in To House.

Besides rabbits, there are other animals too, i.e. Parrots.

There’s also a pig!

Girls spent the whole time petting and feeding rabbits. Coming in only to have their lunch. Leaving me lots of time to catch up with my collagues whom I was meeting for the first time.

Deco around To House.

We left the place only at about 3pm with Iris, we took the bus and went to Bali Ferry Port.

The Streetfood, mainly selling seafood, around the Ferry Port, attracted lots of customers.

Salted eggs are supposed to be famous here as well.

And in Taiwan, Stinky Tofu is sold everywhere.

Guess what? We didn’t buy anything from these stalls, except a stick of squid cake. We were too full from lunch, and I didn’t feel good everytime I wanted to get something, Iris rushed to pay.

We took a short Ferry ride to Danshui.

Over at Danshui, it’s the same, food stalls are everywhere and each one of them were very crowded.

This is the famous Amah’s sour plum drink, but we didn’t really like it.

Danshui street.

Catching the sunset is one of the main attraction, but the evening was gloomy.

Girls found a new game of throwing pebbles into the river.

Riverside Living Statue.

There are lots of streetfood available too.

As the only pork eater at home, she has the honour of having a stick of famous Taiwan grilled sausage.

There are grabbing game machines again.

And other games.

Once we got to the Metro station, Iris, left us to run her own errands.

Outside the metro station, we caught a puppet show.

Lottery icket seller outside the Danshui Metro Station.

Busker crooning Jacky Cheung’s hit.

We had BBQ buffet dinner at Danshui before taking the metro back to the hotel.

To be continued.