12 Days in Taiwan – Day 11 – Yongkang Street and Eslite Xinyi Store

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Our itinerary for Day 11 after Da’an Forest Park was to explore Yongkang Street – a not particularly well-known spot among tourists, and offering a large number of street food, eateries, (a lot of) coffee cafes, and also handmade craft shops. Actually, I should have just stopped at ‘not particularly well-known’ – since it means that there are no busloads of the kind of tourists I’ve been trying hard to avoid this trip. Or rather, none showed up this Day 11 Monday noon time to early afternoon period of our trip.

The place is indeed comparatively quiet, especially before noon to about an hour after that – but after lunch hour is when more people arrive, though apparently still mostly locals and also non-mass tour type visitors. We found ourselves a nice cafe to have lunch. The food wasn’t particularly good, but there was a lot of heart to the restaurant’s two proprietors, and we liked the ambience. So there.

One particular funny moment. We were at a handmade crafts shop looking for gifts and such. And when we were looking at a range of purses, this conversation started:

Peter asked excitedly, “Can I get one? Please Mommy?”
Ling: “Who will it be for? ”
Peter:” My friend Kimberly. I like her a lot!”

I had to frantically grab onto the door beside me for support, as I nearly fainted from shock haha.

Pictures!

Son damn near well gave me a heart attack today!
The husband taking a photo of the wife taking a photo of an “Oh my this is such an interesting flower! I’ve never seen it ever in Singapore!”. This has been happening a lot this trip.
The little cafe we had lunch in. It had one of the nicest and most warmly decorated toilets I’ve ever seen, anywhere!
Not rare antiques on display, but they look absolutely fine as a photo backdrop.

Lunch and Yongkang Street visited, we took a series of interconnected trains to make our way to Eslite Xinyi Store, a nine floor department store with each floor set aside on a product theme: e.g. books, fashion, stationery, crafts etc. There is also a large foodcourt at the basement level, with a large number of eateries offering Japanese cuisine.

The fifth level of the store is child-minded. Lots of individual toys and art n’ craft places, and also a small children bookstore section too.
The Lego City series of sets always attracts P’s attention: whether in Singapore or in Taipei.
Katsus galore at the basement foodcourt.

Finally, our itinerary included a climb up Elephant Mountain in the early evening in order for… you’ve guessed it, me to take sunset photographs of Taipei 101. We were iffy about this activity even during the planning phase though, and decided finally on the actual day itself not to do it, on account that the comments for the climb all invariably point out that it’s a tough climb, especially for those who’re not used to this sort of thing. Someone even compared the climb to going up about 45 floors of staircases. Ling remarked that Peter would probably last all going up to the third floor before whining to be carried! So, we hung out a little longer at Eslite Xinyi Store, and stepped out just after 5PM for a Golden Hour shoot Taipei 101 from the ground level instead – see the next post!