Hello :)
Friday it was raining heavily in the morning so I decided to stay in and write and also pack for our trip to Hualien the next day.
When the weather finally cleared up a bit I left for Daan Park. I got off at Dongmen because I’ve read about a café in the area that supposedly is quite good. It’s called the Formosa Vintage Café. But when I entered I noticed it’s not my cup of tea… So I didn’t stay… Because Lonely Planet wrote that the café also is a museum I thought it would be interesting for me, but it only had some old newspapers, toys etc. at display. And no explanations in English… (Since it really is a café, not a museum) But maybe if you’re a fan of vintage stuff you’ll like the atmosphere?
inside Formosa Vintage Café
Next I went to Daan Park. And I have to take back all I said earlier about parks in Taipei ;) I won’t change my earlier entry, because it was what I felt when I wrote it, but I have to add, that until then I hadn’t been to many parks either. And not to Daan Park. :)
I love Daan Park. It’s very similar to German parks in the sense that there are smaller paths and more trees, but of course the flora and fauna here is different. For example there were many birds I havn’t seen before :)
my lunch from a bakery
weird birds ;)
snack: green tea bread with red bean and mochi filling
here in Taipei there are many street dogs :(
Since it was already getting late I decided to go back to my hostel by foot. As you might have noticed I love going by foot ;) I took some pictures along the way.
Bubble Tea :)
at Ximen
For dinner we decided to have “western” food and went to Chili’s at Ximen. We had a chicken salad and Hot artichoke and spinach dip. :)
Later we got some mango shaved ice for desert at a shop near by.
Since we had to wake up early the next day in order to take the train to Hualien we went to bed early.
Saturday I woke up at 6:30. Our train departed at 8:48. For the first hour or so we didn’t have reserved seats, but we found some that weren’t taken yet.
The ride to Hualien takes roughly 2,5 h and costs about 450 NTD for one journey. We bought some pork buns for breakfast to eat in the train. At the Taipei Metro it’s prohibited to eat, drink, smoke or chew gum inside the trains, but the eating/drinking part doesn’t apply to long distance trains.
We slept most of the journey. ;)
When we arrived at Hualien Station it was pouring… Fortunately we had bought some raincoats at a convenience store earlier in Taipei.
First thing we did was go to the Visitor Information Center to ask about going to Taroko National Park. Since we arrived at 11:30 it was already to late to go to the National Park, but that was ok, since it was raining anyway. We already knew that we probably would take a private cap for the day to go to the park the next day, but preferred to also ask at the Information center. There they informed us that indeed this would be the best choice for us, since you can only go by bus (with tuns of other tourists, for about 1700 NTD per person) or by taxi (2500 NTD for 8 hours, and you can go wherever YOU like and how long you like) if you don’t have a car or scooter.
So for us the taxi was the best option so we booked a taxi at the Information Center for 8:30 am the next day. The driver would pick us up at the hostel.
Our next stop was the hostel. The lady at the Information Center gave us a map and a description on how to get to the hostel, though the description wasn’t very accurate so in the end we took a huge detour… (In the rain…)
The hostel was ok… We booked a private 2 bed room for the night which cost 440 NTD. And the hostel itself was fine (and freshly renovated), but we didn’t have beds… Only mattresses on the floor… But oh well, I slept very good :D (Mainly because I only had Alex for a room mate, not 3 other (sometimes noisy) room mates.)
breakfast ;)
random kawaii picture of the day?
The hostel was the Formosa Backpackers Hostel, if you’re interested. The dorms seemed to have beds ;)
For lunch we went to a Japanese style restaurant. We each ate a bento box with eel. I loooooove eel. :D
Since Hualien isn’t too beautiful (it’s a little bit like a small Taipei) and there isn’t too much to see we just wanted to go to a temple near by, which was quite beautiful! :)
It’s at the foot of a mountain, so you have to climb some stairs…
stylish rain ponchos ;)
near the temple
By then we were drenched so we decided to go to a café. We found the beautiful café Alice. It’s a café targeted at families and they have a room where kids can play and many books for reading.
I had two matcha lattes and Alex had coffee. :D (we stayed for several hours, since it was so nice and outside it kept raining).
For dinner we wanted to go to a nightmarket, but the one we found wasn’t too big, or maybe because of the rain not many stalls were open… :S
We had a duck role that was a little spicy :) Very delicious!
The rest of the day we spent window shopping and sampling sweets. :) I bought some mochi cakes for souvenirs.
We also had Dan Bing, which is like a Chinese savory crape.
Afterwards we went home (drenched…).
So that was it for those two days… I know I didn’t do too much, but it was raining most of the time.
Thanks for reading!! :)
Until next time,
Pia
Kawaii Traveling 