Day 2 in Taiwan and we again started the day by going in search of breakfast. Things went slightly less smoothly than yesterday as the cafe we chose had no English menus and required you to write out your own order in Mandarin. Thankfully a young woman took pity on us and wrote out an order for us. I’m not exactly sure what we ate but it was tasty and so cheap and it was fun to eat in such a local spot.
Breakfast done, we headed home to meet Claudia and drive to Taichung, about an hour south of Hsinchu, with plans to visit the National Taichung Theatre and a gallery. We ended up in Taichung before the National Theatre opened so we headed over to a nearby Mitsukoshi for an early lunch. The theatre is a really cool space to walk through and it’s full of cute cafes and local things to buy. It’s totally worth a stop. Next up we made a brief detour for coffee before heading to the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts where we saw an exhibition of works by Taiwanese artists. The Chinese calligraphy was particularly beautiful to see.
Claudia needed to get back to Hsinchu to pick up her son from school and so Dan and I decided to dash off to the Hsinchu coast line. We’d planned to check out the fish markets and perhaps do a 17 km cycle along the shoreline but we arrived too late to rent bikes and the fish markets were closing up.
We wandered for a while as the sun set and then headed back to a night market we spotted on our way out to the marina. It was my first time at a Taiwanese night market and although we started small, I was totally overwhelmed by choice (and sweat). We tried sticky rice with mushrooms and chickpeas, grilled cumin lamb, tiny fried quail eggs (for Dan), fried sweet potato balls and the most delicious and flakey spring onion pancake. The markets were buzzy and crowded and while the vibe was a+, we were so hot and sweaty we headed home and crashed early (definitely both still jet lagged). Tomorrow, on to Taipei!
