Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Taiwan Day 4

Day 4.

Morning started with a cup of beautifully brewed coffee. We ate at the bakery near the hostel before strolling down to Fong Da Coffee. The coffee is so so good, for they roast their own beans on site. Mmmmm...

Afternoon, we came to the largest bookshop in Taipei, Eslite. Opens for 24 hours, 4 levels. It's like in book heaven. All my japanese-translated-chinese pastry books are here!! 幸福!! Needless to say, we spent a substantial amount of time browsing. Thanks Yan for accomodating me!

Next, we continued to explore the immediate shopping area of Taipei 101. Mitsukoshi, Warner Village. In one of the Mitsukoshi buildings, I found this! A Sadaharu Aoki pastry corner! Ahhh! He is like the leading patissier in the world, having successfully imported his brand of pastry into Paris, France, the capital of pastry.

The sales assisstant informed us that the macaroons and chocolates on display are specially air-flown from Japan to test out the market here in Taiwan. Hiah, I am already grateful that I am able to eat them here.

From left: 肉桂 lychee, raspberry, citrus caramel, yuzu peppercorn. Perfectly round, crisp but not too brittle, and well-balanced flavours. Perfect.

We caught the movie Push at Warner Village during the in between time we had while waiting for my mum to come to meet us. A relatively good movie. Then, we came to 101 for dinner.

We met my cousin who is studying in Taipei for dinner, at a Japanese buffet restaurant. Dinner was okayy, not bad for a buffet. 101 is so expensive! Ouch!

After dinner, we rushed to take the last elevator up to the highest possible level 101. To ascend to level 89, it took a cool 40 seconds, though the cool factor was spoiled by the elevator assisstant hilariously trying to spout the welcome message 3 times in Chinese, English and Japanese before the doors opened.

Well, the benefit of being so high up in the sky is we get to see everything, on the other hand, everything is so minute, so tiny that a light mist would just blot them out. Up at the obsevatory deck, we were given this walkie talkie thingy as a personal commentor.We found out pretty soon that it was useless and quickly returned them to the staff, and then went up one level to the open-air deck. We thought the open-air deck would be more exciting. But it turns out that the deck is fenced by 3 metres high grills. Well, not so thrilling now because you get to see the world through the eyes of a caged prisoner.

I officially declare that I have successfully withstood the elements, overcomed hardships, to stand up here, 388m above ground! :)

Happy~

Posing in front of the super technology that protects the building when earthquake strikes.

101 mascot, so cute!


End.

No comments: