TAIPEI WEEKEND TRIP

My mom was just in town for 10 days. While she was here we decided to take her to Taipei, which has plenty of historic temples to visit and an incredible national museum (right up her alley!). M's aunt, uncle and cousin also joined us, making it a fun family vacation.

When we arrived in Taipei, we checked into our amazing hotel Les Suites Taipei Chingcheng. I could write a whole post just on how great our stay was at this place. Instead, I will share some highlights below.

• The location is very convenient. It's located just a block from a MRT stop (Nanjing E Rd). So you don't have to rely on taxis to get around the city.

• The concierge provides each room a cell phone which allows you to call other rooms, the reception desk and local numbers for free while you are out and about exploring the city. For example, we split up from my mom one morning. She went to a museum and we went out for dumplings. If we needed to get a hold of her, we could just call her room number from our cell phone and her phone would ring in the museum. Genius, especially when traveling internationally!

• The hotel offers a tasty mix of western and eastern breakfast options and late night snacks (which were all included in our room rate).

• The hotel goes above and beyond to ensure your stay is a pleasant one - from the basket of fruit in our hotel on our arrival to offering many cozy places to sit back and enjoy your time with family and friends.

My mom declared that she would fly back to Taipei just to stay in this hotel again!

After we checked into our hotel, we headed to Longshan Temple, a beautiful Buddhist temple built in 1738. According to our Lonely Planet guide, if you arrive at the temple at certain times during the day (6am, 8am and 5pm), you can hear the worshippers gather in chanting. Unfortunately, we arrived around 6pm.

For dinner, we headed to Shinlin Night Market. We were expecting the night market to be similar to Singapore's hawker stalls, but it was completely different. While the variety and quality of food did not compare to Singapore, Shinlin's market had much more than just food to offer, including clothing and carnival game stalls. It was quite the cultural experience. The energy of the people swarming around us was incredible.

By 10pm we were stuffed with food and feeling sleepy, so we headed home.

Day 2 took us to the Dr. San Yat-sen Memorial Hall (which was just okay - most of the information in the memorial hall is written in Chinese characters, so we didn't get as much out of the visit) and Din Tai Fung for lunch (which was the best meal of the trip - amazing dumplings)!. They have branches all over Asia and in the US.

Dr. San Yat-sen Memorial

Dumpling making at Din Tai Fung

With our stomachs stuffed with dumplings, we were ready to tackle the National Palace Museum, which has the worlds top collection of ancient Chinese art.

While we were at the museum, we were able to see their national treasure, the jadeite cabbage, which is a piece of jadeite carved into the shape of a cabbage head. We also made it to the Royal Style Cartier/ Qing Dynasty exhibit, which included jewelry and objects from ancient China and European royalty.

After the museum, we headed to Taipei 101, the 3rd tallest building in the world (for now). Taipei does not have an impressive skyline like Hong Kong, because it lacks really tall buildings except Taipei 101.

We had dinner at Shinyeh 101, a Taiwanese restaurant on the 85th floor. The impressive views made up for the lackluster food and minimum charge per table.

During our last day in Taipei, we traveled up to Maokung Mountain via a gondola to visit a local tea house for lunch. The gondola ride was very scenic and quite the steal (around US$1.70/each way).

Once at the top, we walked about a half mile (in 95F weather - it was hot!) to a temple.

And past some tea houses along the way...

A map of all the tea houses in the area - so many to choose from!

Until we eventually settled on a quiet tea house away from the crowds.

The tea shop is owned by a small family. The mother performed the tea ceremony, while the daughter translated the ceremony process in English so that we could understand what was going on.

 

She taught us how how to determine when tea is finished brewing (if you make it in clay pot) and how to not only enjoy the taste of tea, but the smell as well. We really enjoyed the wonderful tea, food and the views of the rolling hills and mountains.

After our trip to the tea house, we traveled back to our hotel to pick-up our luggage. We had about an hour to kill so we headed to a local mall for some savory and sweet snacks and one last bubble tea! In Taipei, drinking at least one bubble tea a day is a must. Bubble tea originated in Taiwan and for some reason it just tastes better there.

Taipei has something to offer everyone, from a bustling city center to scenic mountain villages on the city outskirts. Better yet, the flight from Hong Kong is less than 1.5 hours. We will be back again soon.