After a sleep in we made our way to the very first Din Tai Fung for lunch. We could easily spot the place because it was the one with all the people out the front!

Out the front of the restaurant there was a sign with the wait time of 80 minutes! We considered skipping it but being the original restaurant we thought we’d just use the opportunity to explore the area while we waited.

The waitresses all spoke many languages and even the announcements for when there was a spot ready was in the language of person who reserved it. Ours was English but we also heard Japanese, Korean and Chinese.

We also had time to look at the menu so then the waitress actually took our order before we left for our walk.

80 minute wait time for Din Tai Fung

Din Tai Fung and Daan Park

Just a block away is Daan Park and weather was perfect so we took a stroll down there and enjoyed the scenery.

We noticed there were squirrels scurrying around and climbing the trees so we went in for a closer look. There was a family of tourists nearby feeding them and they gave us some of their nuts so we could feed them too.

That was a nice surprise considering we barely ever see squirrels let alone feed them! The park was pretty big and interestingly they had an insect repellent dispenser publically available for free! Not that we needed it… yet.

We were seated up stairs and because we had already ordered, our food already started to come out. We started with some much needed vegetables, some snow pea leaves and soon after that, the famous pork xiaolongbao and pork and prawn potstickers. We also got a single desert which was called a “golden lava bun” which had salted egg inside. It was really nice so we ordered one more and saved room for a shaved ice dessert that was sold at a bunch of places in the area.

Dessert

We had read about how the were a lot of dessert places in the area and we saw a lot of advertising for a place called Smoothie House and after checking reviews it seemed pretty popular, so we gave it go and weren’t disappointed!

The only complaint was the sun has started to go down so it wasn’t very hot but they still had water being sprayed from the roof right above the only free spots to eat. It was a very popular spot!

Elephant mountain

After loading up on lots of food, we planned to work it all off by climbing a mountain! Specifically Elephant Mountain which has a nice view over Taipei.

Especially because I haven’t been exercising much since hurting my back, this hike showed how unfit I’ve become! We climbed to the top and had our timing spot on to arrive as the sun was setting and the sky had a nice golden glow.

There were quite a few mosquitoes around and they were really big, but I think we managed to survive not getting bitten even without insect repellent, which we totally forgot about! If only they had the free dispenser here instead!

Linjiang night market

Even though we eaten a fair bit, it was dark and in Taipei that means more eating at a night market! We went to Linjiang night market which was pleasantly much quieter than what we’ve seen so far.

We were trying to find a gua bao place we had read about but it seems to have closed, but we did buy some small fried chicken pieces and sweet potato balls.

The other dish we had read about here was “a sausage in a sausage”. Where they take a pork sausage, slice it open like a bun and put a sausage made from rice instead of meat in the middle. We didn’t end up trying this but it was interesting to see either way.

On the train ride home, we were stopped at a station when all of a sudden the train played a loud announcement in multiple languages and both of our phones started vibrating like crazy!

It was an early warning system for emergencies letting everyone know that there were tremors detected in the area and the trains would be operating under safety precautions.

It was cool to see the emergency system kick in and luckily we didn’t actually feel anything and our train seemed to continue as normal.