This morning, first thing I did when I woke up was to peep out of the window. Yay! Sky is clear and there is a little ray of sunlight! As we will be visiting Beitou and Tamsui today, having good weather is important.
Jumped right out of bed, woke everybody up, rushed all the lazy bones to wash up and get ready for a full day of outing.
I am keeping my fingers crossed for good weather, though the weather forecast site that I swear by says that it will rain. :))
Took a train to Beitou and...
changed train to New Beitou. 
I am not sure if it is because Beitou is a tourist area, the train station appears to be very well kept, bright and kind of different from other stations that we have been taking trains from. Even the trains are brightly colored!
After we alight at Beitou, we took another train to Xin Beitou. After a visit to Hell Valley, we will be coming back to this train station and continue our journey to Tamsui.
When we came out of the train station, there is this "open" space(photo below). We kept walking straight and come to a traffic light. Cross at this traffic light and once we reached the opposite side of the road. We paused. There is a left and right road going forward (not immediate left or right, but you do know that you got to choose). The road towards our right is near a open air garden. The road on our left is just a road going that leads straight ahead. We asked a lady. She told us both roads lead to Hell Valley, but the left side is a shorter route. We took her advise. This is should be the route to take because you will a see the cultural centre as well as the public hot spring. Apparently if you take the road towards the right, you will walk pass hotels and small little operators of hot bath.
Millennium Hot Spring is a public hotspring. I am not sure if the old uncles and aunties mind if I snapped photos of them and the hotspring..so I did a quick snap around and hope they don't mind! We did bring along our swimwear. Not sure if we wana have a dip, we paid and went in anyway. My kids were shy and they keep saying that the pool is so small with so many people, not hygienic. My Gal saw an uncle dug his ear and washed his hand in the pool...wahaahaaa! We scoot immediately. Jokes aside, I think if you do not mind sharing and enjoy soaking in hot spring with people around, chatting and laughing, then this is really a good experience.
Look out for this shop with red signage, walk straight ahead, along the rows of shops..
After visitng Hell Valley, we back track and walked back towards the train station. This time, again at that traffic road junction where we have to decide :), we crossed it, but did not walk towards the train station. We crossed the road, and walk towards our left. We hit a eatery stall (below). They display a sign "小吃“ near the roadside so you won't miss it. They sell wonderful noodles and meatballs! Must try. Unless you want to have McDonalds ot Starbuck which is across the road, this small eatery is probably the only noodle stall around. Opposite road of the stall is a shop selling leather shoes, if this helps in locating the stall.
After our meal, we moved next door to have desert....
After desert, made our way back to the train station to continue our journey to Tamsui.
After you come out from Tamsui train station, look out for the following sign..Follow the directions to Tamsui Old Street. We were so silly, missed this sign, walked out of the station and walk straight further down towards the big main road and crossed the road. Ended up in their local wet market. What you should look out for when you exit from the train station is to look for Mister Donut. Find this shop, the old street entry is somewhere opposite the donut shop. It is not very far and there is no need to go towards the main road or cross any road.
It has started to rain again !
Mister Donut is somewhere on the left when you exit from this "arch" brick frame
The whole bunch of silly us walked towards the main road shown below and cross it some more! Walked long long and wrong wrong way to Tamsui Old Street! Actually, u see the red sign behind the tree? The left side of the res sign will also lead you to the start of the old street. We were too smart, walked around the grey shopping mall, towards the right side. Hahaha LOL!
Initially we thought they sell cold Ah Ge ( at the time we order, we only know the food name as Ah Ge, but have no clue what it was or how it looks like)..so we thought they have something like icy Ah Ge. The owner thought we were mad bunch of folks when we asked for Ah Ge with ice! Wahahahaha! I think it will go down in their joke book in history to come !
This is Ah Ge! Not cooked yet. It looked like big fat mushrooms. But it is actually Tau Pok Skin, stuffed with fried vermicilli and covered top with fish paste. That's it lor. I am no fan of tau pok but like always say, travel so far, everything must try. So we ordered 3 Ah Ge and 2 bowls of fishball soup..
Met one big Singaporean family there who seems to be really keen to announce to the whole world that they are tourists! Speaks only English, including ordering food! Buay Tahan.. (oh I did hear phrases of mandarin here and there, I am sure), Their kids and grandparents, uncles and aunties all spoke in English, or trying to. The only thing that gave them away that they are likely able to speak Mandarin? Make a guess? Haahaahaaa! Broken, Ah lian ah beng style Cheeena spoken In-ga-lesssh lor!
After Ah Ge, we went to the washroom at McDonalds somewhere further down the road. Then we walked to the seaside or whatever you call this place (around a left bend after we come out from MsDonalds). Tamsui main old street is one straight street, but there are many side alleys and lanes that you can explore. You don't need to worry about finding this seaside walkway, you will see it somehow. There are also rows of shops and eateries along this stretch of beautiful walkway. I heard that in the evening, sitting there drinking tea and having a meal is the most enjoyable thing to do. Oh and if you intend to buy fery tickets to Fisherman's Whar, the ticketing booth is around here too. As it was a rainy day and we are all half tired, no mood to wait till evening time. So gave up the idea and just roamed till tired and make our way back to minsu to zzzzzzz.
No visit to Tamsui is complete with buying 2 famous products...Yu Su ( fish crackers) and Ah Por Tie Dan (Granny's Iron eggs). We bought 4 packets of these..2 packets for my colleagues and 2 for the family..
See the above picture ? The green sign? That is the shop we bought our fish crackers. This store has a lot of patrons...so we add on to the crow numbers. :)
Kids saw this....and ruuuuuusssssssh to buy one immediately. What is so speical? I don't know and the taste is not fantastic...gimmicks!
In Taipei, we see many places selling grill quail's eggs. Kids tried. After the owner grilled the eggs, he will place the stick of eggs on a waire gauze and you can squeeze mustard, sprinkle salt and pepper, and other spices onto the egg and eat it. Kids being kids, they put every single sauce and spice onto their one and only sitck of eggs ( 5 on 1 stick) and eat it. Gross!
Finally....we finished our Tamsui walk around and it's time to return to Minsu to take an afternoon nap! Old dad needs it :) Before that, I introduced my mum to Mister Donut. It was love at first bite. My god, subsequent days, she will always walk to the branch at Ximending, buy and buy, eat and eat, to the extent she even collected enough stickers to exchange for 1 cute little blanket! **FAINT**
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After a good rest, we decided to have our dinner at Ximending. Another highly receommended food stall....Ya Rou Bian! This time, it is my dad who had the love at first bite feeling. hahahaah! It is actually not duck, but goose meat. No idea why the shop is named as Ya Rou. It is not braised, has a slight salty taste and a slight hint of being smoked. Over all, very tender, juicy and delightful stuff to sink teeth into. The noodles are nicer that bee-hoon. To place order is pretty simple. Sit down, waiter come to you. Tell them either you want half, or a quarter or just a drumstick plate of goose and how many plain noodles / bee hoon. The waiter will also be asking you if you want the innards like duck kidney, intestines-which normally will be sold out by afternoon. We went twice, twice also sold out:(
We ordered a quarter portion..regretted, should have ordered half or one whole! :) On our 2nd visit, I ordered a drumstick to try. I feel that drumstick is too meaty and not as nice. Strongly recommend to go for the standard half or quarter order. Drum stick not nice. Whoel group of us , including kids agreed..
Finished our meal at Ya Rou Bian, went to a bubble tea store just next to it and bought a cup of hot coffee for dad, milk tea for kids and me, nothing. Just watching them gulped down the drink made me doubly full after the meal. hahahaahah!
After walking around for a while more in Ximending, we went back to minsu and rested for the night.
From our activities today, felt that our Taipei's trip is literally a "eat and eat" journey. Each day we seem to be eating non stop. Sometimes you don't even need to spend a single cent to fill your stomach. Just by sampling food here and there, that fills u! Especially if you visit tourist attraction places, in order to entice you to buy their products/goods, there are always prenty of stuff to try and sample.
If not for the rain when we reached Tamsui, we would have loved to roam around for much longer and also made a trip to Fisherman Wharf. Nevertheless, we still managed to enjoy ourselves and find another kind of fun walking in the rain!
Weather : The weather was great in the morning. Once we reached Tamsui, the cats and dogs came from the sky again. Haiz...but can't complain much and thank old heaven for the beautiful weather in the first half of the day:)
Directions : All mentioned in the above post. Happy reading !
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