The morning is always good, especially so if you wake up in 5 Star Grand Hyatt hotel. Breakfast is no exception, only the best is served. I think the breakfast buffet is SGD$35-40 if i didn’t remember wrongly. Nice ambience, nice food, to the extent i don’t want to leave : )

They have this counter where a chef makes waffles and pancakes for you on the spot. The toppings are good stuff, chocolate, butter, honey (just to name a few). What’s even more impressive is that there is a honey comb, every drop of honey comes directly from it. The honey is really pure.

Finishing breakfast, we went to Taipei Musemum to see arts, arts and more arts. After which, we go to a special restaurant for lunch, some sort like Singapore Din Tai Feng. Then the tour is officially ended, and the rest of the time will be free-and-easy! Cheers. Watch this space for the next post

For the full post, please go to ladyirontravel

” Open your eyes, see the world “

We arrived at Grand Hyatt around 4pm? It simply blew me away. Five star hotels are indeed in a different league. Easily put, Grand Hyatt is the BEST hotel in our 8 days Taiwan trip, the services, the rooms, the prestige. It won hands-down.

After settling down and visiting the hotel, we went out for a walk. From Grand Hyatt, we cross a overhead bridge to Taipei 101 (its just beside Grand Hyatt). And the good thing is, all the shopping centres there are linked together with bridges and shelters. Beside Grand Hyatt is Taipei 101, and beside is New York New York, with a Cinema complex just behind it, and beside the Cinema is ???? shopping mall. Complicated right? Hahaha.

Taipei 101 is some sort of our Paragon, mayb a bit more up than Paragon, but the idea is there, all the branded goods can be found here. And its divided into two parts, the shopping area, and the office area. Not really our league, so we left and walk over to New York New York, another shopping centre beside Taipei 101.

New York New York! Cool name? Inside nothing much to shop actually, but we walked around, quite a few of restaurants in there, but none suits our eyes. We end up buying donuts (see below)

Arhh.. The donut craze. Mister Donut ought to be the most popular donut store in Taiwan with many branches around the whole island. Each donut is about 1.5SGD, and too many to choose from.

went with Donald to wander around, we walk to the cinema no particular show to watch, so we went to ????. The shopping mall is super complicated, it has 4 blocks, catering to diff needs of the consumer, one block the high end type etc. The shopping mall is freaking huge, but we cant find anything we like. Damn the rain again, if not for the rain, we can go further, but because of it, our movement is restricted to shelter areas. While on the way back to Grand Hyatt empty-handed, we saw this shop call NET, which has much branches in Taiwan, so we went in and took a look. Donald even claimed that so expensive shop sure cannot find anything we can afford one. But surprise surprise, there is a sale going on, and we ended up with our pocket considerately lighter.

The next post is the last day of our Taiwan trip, we will go to the Taiwan Musemum, and also free-time shopping in Xi Men Ting.

For the full post, please go to ladyirontravel

” Donuts - Do not eat it “

Last night we slept in a lousy hotel called Paradise hotel (not paradise at all), but the location is good, its located in West street, or more famously known as ???. We didn’t visit the area though, partly because it was too late and partly because i was engrossed in watching Taiwan TV. No worries, tonight we will go to Grand Hyatt which is at the East side of Taipei, but tomorrow night we will be coming back to this west side of Taipei, and have a chance to visit ???. Waking up, we went to visit the Taiwan President house. Not really included in the package, but the tour guide “throw” it in as a bonus visit. We took a 15min walk around to view the place, nothing much to see though.

Finally to the interesting aspect of this post, we took a 45min bus ride to ??????. It was a longer ride because ?? is located on the outer of Taipei. ?????? was a famous place for its beautiful scenaries, and also the lover bridge. But as God permits it, rain spoilts everything. What was suppose to be a beautiful harbor did not turn out to be as nice due to the poor weather. I like the rain when its on my side, and hate it when its against me. How many times when you wish it will rain, but it did not, and when you do not want it to rain, it came pouring down?

Ahh.. After going to ??????, we go to ???? which is a street 5mins away from the fisherman wharf. If you notice, ???? appears in one of the scenes in ???? starring Angela and Wu Zun. Nice place, lots of food and interesting things to see.

There is this coffee cafe, ecoffee. Like what the signboard wrote, “who says 35TWD (1.5SGD) cant get you a good coffee?” Ecoffee uses choice raw beans and makes coffee at the time of order so to satisfy most customers’ taste buds with most attractive prices. In a short time of several years, Ecoffee has become one of the largest coffee brand chain stores with over 230 coffee shops scattering in Taiwan and becong one part of people’s life.

If you know, Taiwan people don’t drink as much coffee as Singaporeans do, they drink tea, lots of tea. So in Taiwan, a starbucks coffee is consider the norm. Until ecoffee comes along and threatens as the “anti-starbucks” It offers good coffee at a much cheaper price to starbucks, and its now open in Singapore too. The only branch is located in Geylang lorong 13 (of all places?) O well.

We took the one hour ride back to the heart of Taipei, and we are going back to our hotel for the night Grand Hyatt. The next post will be on Grand Hyatt, and our night wandering of Taipei : )

Catch the full post at ladyirontravel

” Hand in hand, heart to heart, we walk the lovers bridge “

After the last post where we leave Yangmingshan hotspring, we are now going into Taipei, Shilin night market. By the time we reached the place, it was about 730pm, and we only got until 930pm to eat and shop. Thats the bad thing about following tours ) :

Shilin ???? is divided into two areas, one where all the foodie gathers, some sort of our Singapore Hawker centre where there are a lot of stalls selling different type of food. And the other area across the street is the ?? night market area, where there are a lot of shops and stalls selling all sort of stuff. Clothes, shoes, u name it they have it.

Taiwan ?? are actually similar in nature, with the food they sell being mostly identical, and the clothes, stuff they sell also fairly similar. From what i observe, ladyironchef can classify the top 3 most popular into the following (according to personal opinion)

Top 3 Most Popular ??

1. ??

2. ????? 

3. ???

Chicken cutlets ?? can be seen anywhere, and is one of the most popular  ?? in Taiwan, in Singapore, made famous by the ??????. But then actually its not just ?????? that are nice, there are a lot stores all selling very nice one

?????  as the name implies, big sausage with a small sausage inside. As i never had it before, on first thought i really believe it was a big sausage with small sausage, but boy was i wrong. The “big sausage” is actually made of glutinous rice, with a ???? inside it. This post does not have a close up picture of it, watch out for the coming post for the picture.

??? i believe is also known for one of the most famous ?? in Taiwan. The ??? which they had is different from what we had in Singapore & Malaysia, they had a extra sweet sauce on the ???, which many of Singaporeans may find it weird, but personally i found it to be quite nice.

Top 3 Most Common ??

1. ??

2. ???

3. ??

This three type i think are some of the most common ?? in Taiwan, many diff stalls selling the same item. Anyway, lets get on to the nice food we ate at Shilin.

After eating, we hurried to the night market across the street and start shopping. Too many things to buy, and too many people around. Hahaha! No time to take photos, so this is the only photo showing the street. Not too bad, my rewards are a black vest, t-shirt, and cap. More to come, more to come. Tomorrow, the next post we shall go to ?????? Fishermans Wharf & old street. After which we will go to the star hotel of the trip, Grand Hyatt!! And also some night shopping. See ya!

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” I love travelling. Travel lets me see, touch, feel the different cultures of other countries “