TAIWAN DAY 6: ANOTHER DAY OF EATING AND A ROADTRIP

Our sixth day in Taiwan was a Saturday, so a number of us decided to take a road trip (10 of us in all). But we started off the day with some of that favorite breakfast Taiwanese food- soy bean milk, fried dough, sesame pockets, etc. My aunt wanted to take us to a place that was reputed to have a really good breakfast, so we drove less than 10 minutes to an obscure second floor space off a small street. One wouldn't suspect that there'd be a breakfast place here, but once you got to the top of the stairs, you saw the line.
Apparently this place is really well known for it's different types of freshly made sesame pockets. Here they are, in a little case. This really was one of those places that only locals are gonna know about, so I was happy to be there with my cousins. The line wasn't exactly moving quickly, so my mom, knowing how I enjoy photographing food, took me over to the area where a lot of foods were being prepared, so I took some videos for you.

Here's someone making the sesame pockets

Here they are being pulled out of an oven. It's like a tandoori oven- the sesame pockets were stuck to the side of the walls of the oven and the heat source was a fire at the bottom of the oven.

And here's fried dough being fried in a large vat of oil...yummy.

Finally, here's our breakfast
I can't say that the soymilk or the fried dough was any better than ones that we'd had before, but those sesame pockets with green onions really were very good.

On our way out of the restaurant, we saw a man with a cart rolling down the street (he was literally pushing it down the street). And my aunts saw that he had lots of different type of cakes, so they stopped to buy some.
This is one of the things I really like about Taiwan. It's a modern city (that has way too much traffic), but you'll still have these traditional type of carts that are so low tech and non-modern. I liked the guy working the cart, because he made his own stuff and was very proud of it all. My aunts ended up buying several types of cake- turnip, taro and scallion.Then it was a quick stop at a traditional market, we needed to pick up some fruit for the house. I'd never been to a market like this, but it's not that different from any other market in the world- various stalls all selling different foods.

I really liked this one vendor, selling these ducks in a box. When I took the pic, he tried to speak English with me (ahhhh, I'm such a tourist)My aunts bought fruit- since Taiwan's a tropical country, there's a huge variety year round.And while they were busy with that, I took a pic of a meat vendor. If you look at the upper right hand corner of the pic, yes, you'll notice some pig snouts, cause those are pig faces.After breakfast, we returned home and prepared for our roadtrip. My cousins wanted to take us to a seaside down called Yilan, on the northern coast of Taiwan (about an hour and a half from Taipei). I slept most of the way there, and when I awoke, we were looking for the place where we'd be having lunch.

It ended up being this large building near the ocean, with a view of two small islands called Turtle Island. It was a major tourist destination and the parking lot was full of tour buses. When we entered, we found a large space with a seafood market on the first floor, filled with different stalls. On the second floor, there were restaurants- meaning different stalls that were preparing fresh seafood. Each place had the fresh seafood out for display. Most of it was really fresh, though there were bins of non-native stuff (like salmon) which you could tell was frozen.
We headed for the largest restaurant in the back, where we quickly found seats at a big round table. Once again, my aunts did the ordering. Here are three of them snacking on guavas before our lunch arrived.And then the food started coming. In the front you'll see a stirfried clam dish. There's a seaweed salad in the middle, and I think that's squid on the right.
I enjoyed this dish of fried fishies, served with salt and pepper mix on the side.But my favorite dish of all were these shrimp- simply steamed.A lot of times when you eat shrimp, it just doesn't taste like real shrimp- especially that farmed stuff. But these shrimp were delicious- sweet, simply prepared and full of shrimpy flavor.

After lunch we headed downstairs to look at the seafood market. Lots of the stall had baskets of various dried seafoodsAs my aunts and parents bought and sampled stuff (the vendors were big into sampling) I wandered off to take more pics. I dared Cathy to try different stuff, so I could take a video of it and get it up on the Travel Channel, but she refused.

I found a vendor selling lots of fresh, live seafoodand here's Cathy taking a pic with some gigantic fish. You really can't tell how bit they are from the picture, but they were huge.On our way out, my mom bought some local guavas from one of the vendors.After lunch, we spent an hour lost on the backroads trying to find our next destination- a Taiwanese cultural heritage site. After multiple stops for directions, I was ready to give up and head back to Taipei, but we finally found our way. It was kinda like a mini theme park of Taiwanese heritage. It was kinda fun (had it not been so freaking hot, humid, rainy and packed with people).

Apart from the wood carving exhibit that I really enjoyed, my favorite part of the park was this display of mochiand TA DA! Mochi on a stick (everything tastes better on a stick!)You get 5 mochis for a dollar and I got: red bean, green tea, sesame, chocolate and peanut. They weren't the best mochi I'd ever had, though I did like the peanut, but it was on a stick!!! Ahhh, that might've been one of my favorite parts of my entire trip.

After walking around more and sampling more stuff (I'm telling you, Taiwanese people are way into sampling!) we finally headed back to Taipei. My parents had to go to a dinner party (but we kids refused to go) and instead, we had dinner with my aunts at a dim sum restaurant.

I'm not sure of the exact name of the place- something like 24 hour Hong Kong dim sum, but it's a chain. I saw two of them while in Taipei. It's your typical dim sum place (but for dinner) and it was packed with people. Luckily, someone cancelled their reservation and we got a table in a private room.

I really liked this kiwi-apple drink that we started off with. It was cooling, sweet and delicious.And I also liked this helpful little picture menuOf course my aunt did the ordering, and I didn't feel like taking a ton of pics- you guys know what dim sum looks like, but I wanted to highlight two particularly good dishes.

First was the duckI don't know if they have some special type of duck in Taiwan or what, but man, they have some of the best duck that I've had-EVER. The duck was just so much meatier and with less fat, and the flavor was far more intense and duck like. I really loved it.

And then this dish of rice noodles wrapped around fried dough. (it's the one on the left, the one on the right is your typical rice noodles with shrimp) For some reason, the fried dough was extra extra crispy, and the contrast with the soft rice noodle was excellent. Another dish I truly enjoyed. After another quick trip to the Shihlin Night market, it was finally time to go home and rest. Our tummies were stuffed, with yet another full day of eating.