Rilakkuma and Taipei 101

Hello again,

we started this day by grabbing some coffee at the nearby Family Mart and walking to Ximen Station. From there we took the MRT to Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Hall.

The memorial hall itself is not as impressive as the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial but it has a beautiful little park and the views towards Taipei 101 are quite stunning. Unfortunately the hall was closed due to yearly maintenance... Yes, we managed to go there on one of the three days per year they do that maintenance.

Last time I was in Taipei, I went to the Hello Kitty Cafe and loved it. So this time I wanted to try another themed cafe. The Rilakkuma Cafe (also a mascot from Japan, just as Hello Kitty) was a logical choice (I have a plushy at home). :)

I wasn't disappointed. The Cafe is beautifully decorated and the food was also quite good. Although you should expect higher prices than in a normal cafe. Just consider it paying for the decorations.

All the food is Rilakkuma themed, so our pancakes and the cheesecake came in the Rilakkuma shape and our Matcha Latte and Black tea latte came with a little drawing of Kiiroitori (the little yellow chick) and a little Rilakkuma face.

Taiwanese people tend to drink their milk tea and coffee rather sweet, and some sweets (like the cheese cake we ordered) can be quite sweet. I wonder if many people here get diabetes... Or if they just don't drink and eat that much of the sweet stuff. If possible we always ask for no sugar. But in case you forget to ask you most certainly will have ordered a very sweet drink. Most of the times they let you order without sugar though (it only happened twice that they said they couldn't give us the drink without sugar).

Since later that day we wanted to go up Elephant mountain, a popular sun set viewing spot with terrific views of Taipei 101, and JJ had forgotten to bring his tripod, we decided that he would go back to the Hotel in order to get it and I stayed behind waiting by the Sun Yat-Sen memorial hall so we didn't have to pay for two people for the journey in the MRT.

Since our Hotel (located near Longshan Temple) was pretty far away it took a while for JJ to return. So when I was back we decided to eat at Din Tai Fung as a late lunch.

I highly recommend you go there! It is a little more expensive than the average restaurant here, but it is very convenient and easy to order typical and very delicious Chinese food there. The staff speaks English rather well and the menu also comes in English. Din Tai Fung is most famous for their Xiao Long Bao, soup dumplings. As the name suggests they are dumplings filled with very juicy pork. Be sure to try them!! They are sold in other places too, but as I said, Din Tai Fung is a safe bet and very easy for foreigners who don't speak the language.

As far as I know you can't reserve at Din Tai Fung but have to take a number and wait for your table to be ready. The estimated waiting time is shown on a screen. We were very lucky (I assume because we were quite late for lunch) and just had to wait 10 minutes to get a table. You don't order your food at the table, instead the system is very efficient and you get a small sheet where you write your order while waiting for your table to be ready. Once your table is ready you give the ordering sheet to the waitress.

The food also comes rather quickly and free tea is served (so you don't necessarily need to order drinks).

They also give you a little information card on how to eat your Xiao Long Bao the right way :D

You first have to carefully take one, dip it in the vinegar/soy sauce/radish (that you mix previously in the small dish with radish that they give you), then put it on the spoon. Since the dumplings are very hot inside (especially the broth inside) you then have to poke a little hole into the dumpling, so the steaming hot broth pours out a bit to cool down. Then you can proceed to eat the dumpling.

Xiao Long Bao and braised eggplant

Shrimp and pork dumplings and stir fried Taiwanese lettuce

spicy shrimp won ton

you can watch them make the dumplings in the restaurant

Since the day was quite nice (the clouds had almost disappeared) we decided to check out the Taipei 101 Observatory.

We expected long waiting lines in order to buy our tickets (600 NT$ per ticket) and in order to go up using the fastest elevator in the world (16.38 m per second, they get you from the fifth to the 89th floor in 37 seconds). However we were lucky again and could go straight up.

As expected the views were stunning and the building's tuned mass damper, that you can see at the 88th floor is rather impressive. The damper is the largest damper sphere in the world (5.5 m diameter, 660 tons) and reduces the buildings movement during strong winds and earthquakes by up to 40 % (source: the info screens around the damper and wikipedia). Since the damper is a popular tourist attraction now, the city designed the so called damper babies as mascots.


the buildings damper

one of the so called damper babies

After spending some time on the observatory we headed back down in order to climb Elephant mountain in time for the sun set.

The climb is not that long (it took us about 20 - 30 min, but we didn't rest until we were at the top) but sometimes the stairs are very steep. The mountain is very popular among tourists at dawn so be prepared for some crowds. If you want to have a good spot for some photography you should consider coming a little earlier and/or climb a little further than most of the tourists.

Since we were a little late we climbed a little higher and found a little spot for JJ's tripod.

The view is well worth the climb.