An intense summer Taipei heat topping 37 degrees on the “real feel” thermometer has been sapping at our energy this week. Most of the time locked away in the air con at school or at home, it’s certainly a shock to venture out in the middle of the day just as we did today. We had plans to visit the fabric market in the old western district of the downtown and got there on faithful “Blackie” the scooter quite efficiently but nearly every stall and the main market itself was closed. Sunday is obviously not the best day for this area, although we did arrive at the ungodly hour of “a.m.” which seems to be a time of the day purely reserved for sleeping and having a lazy breakfast here in Taipei, which normally suits us just fine!. The area is very un Taipei as it has lots of older style Japanese built buildings and higgledy piggledy streets and houses all over the place.As we were more than 2/3 of the way there we thought we’d zip over to just south east of central Taipei to Yong Kang street, a cosmopolitan pretty hip little area with lots of restaurants and quirky shops and people. It’s almost in the shadow of the 101, yet maintains a very different feel: a street unofficially given over to pedestrian traffic, old one storey shops and plenty little parks and trees. We were tempted by Ice Monster for a snacky kind of lunch as were boiling in the heat and it is a very popular and well known way to cool down. The shaved ice phenomena is huge here as evidenced by a queue forming, so we ventured a bit further down the street to “Yogurt Me”. Wow! This was super delicious….a good size swirl of vanilla yogurt surrounded by three fruits of your choice and topped with a sprinkle of fruit loops….you can see from the photos that we’re new fans! After lunch, Cassy even had her eyes tested with a snazzy machine that she looked in for a few seconds and which then spat out a reading of each eye’s weakness. Much to the glasses shop guy’s amusement, her right eye was perfect (yes perfect!) and her left had only the mildest weakness imaginable…I think she was just looking for an excuse to get some of these impossibly jazzy Japanese designer glasses they’re selling down here. Scootered back home and we caught some footy before I’ve retired to the study to write this blog.
Backtracking to yesterday, we decided to book some tickets to the movies before heading out to dinner. We went to see “Disturbia” without any great expectations at all, yet were pleasantly surprised as it turned out to be a fine character driven movie with the serial killer theme almost an afterthought. We thought we’d give the tequila Sunrise outlet here in Tienmu another go after a mixed effort last time we visited but found it shut and looking sadly abandoned: obviously more people than us were disappointed with it. Oh well, another bites the dust…as I’ve pointed out before on these pages, we always dread to find which restaurants have not survived the summer when we return in August. Wendel’s was an excellent alternative and we just luxuriated in the courtyard where misting jets went off every 30 seconds or so completely changing the temperature and the comfort. We had a beautiful meal and wine and toasted the fact that this restaurant is not going anywhere, anytime soon!
I had a few drinks with my team on Friday at Chili’s after we’d taken the third graders to the park for the afternoon in the baking heat of Friday: I think we all enjoyed the beers a lot! Hopefully I’ll get a copy of the photo next week and post it here. Photos today include Cassy enjoying the cool mist at Wendels last night, both of us having some Yogurt Me and we also sampled some of this delicious juice. The line up at Ice Monster and an old building façade in the old western section of the city.