Day 4 – 14/11/2017 (Tuesday)
News of the day! I’d lost my voice! But on the positive side of things, my sorethroat was somewhat gone. Just… no voice. Yup.
For breakfast, we went to 趙記菜肉餛飩大王 (Zhao Kee Wonton King Cornish) (map), which HWZ travel forum recommended. I ordered a big bowl of wontons without noodle, while Bruno took the one with noodles. It was… okay. Not as fantastic as I expected, but not too bad either. Something that I won’t eat again for sure though.
For my daily dose of caffeine, we popped by Dante’s coffee (map), which was just on the next street. Erm, it’s not really good, to be honest. Louisa’s latte was like at least 10x better. Dante’s coffee is almost like Starbucks. Watered down with no taste. Meh. I’m pretty sure it’s not due to me being sick. I mean, I was pretty sick already when I had Louisa’s coffee and it was still good!
When we were done with the caffeine fix, we proceeded to take the MRT to Taipei Zoo. Nope, we are not heading to the zoo, but we’re going to 猫空 (Maokong), where we’ll have to take a cable car all the way up. It’s supposedly a tea plantation area with lots of tea houses etc. I’ve never been there before, so it’s something new to me as well.
The whole cable car ride was kinda…. misty. Yup. Sky was overcast, and it was really misty. What’s with me and mist whenever I’m in a cable car?! Anyway we queued for the crystal cabin, as it’s the same pricing as the normal one anyway.
When we reached Maokong Station, it was very very windy and both of us just stood there and enjoying the gusts of wind against our faces. But then there’s much to be explored, so we reluctantly moved off and started to look around. We randomly picked a path and started walking down the road, not really knowing where we’re going. Just slowly strolling in the rain… until we came upon some tea houses. Feeling somewhat hungry already (cold weather does that to you), we chose 正大茶园 for lunch. Prior to the trip, I read several online blogs that recommended tea leaves fried rice, so that’s what we ordered. We also ordered a tofu dish, as well as stir-fried potato leaves.
The tea leaves fried rice was actually very nice! No wonder almost everyone recommended it. The stir-fried potato leaves were fresh and crisp too. The braised tofu dish was also great, with very fresh accompanying vegetables. All in all it was a very good meal, in a very quiet restaurant (it was past lunch hours anyway), with a good view to boot!
After we left the restaurant, we walked a bit further down the road before we decided to turn around and went back to Maokong station and continued down another path. We then chanced upon this walking trail, that says the trail’s difficulty is suitable for “family”. All right, sounds good. So off we went. Nice views of plantations greeted us, and we also came across a very nice pavilion with a pond. We couldn’t walk the entire trail though, as we couldn’t see where it ends and it was about 4pm already, only an hour to go before it gets really dark. We didn’t want to lose our way so we u-turned and made our way back. The very bad part about walking this trail is that since it was raining for the whole day, the path was really wet and at some parts, it was quite slippery. I hadn’t noticed it while walking down but when we were walking back, I started to realise that my big toes were starting to hurt. It’s almost like there’s ingrown nail biting down into the flesh – that kind of feeling. Perhaps while trying not to slip on the paths, my toes “clawed” to grip the shoes better and that ended up with the nails biting the flesh after awhile. I ended up with very painful feet that evening….
I tried to bear with the pain and we proceeded to 士林夜市 (Shilin night market) as per our plan. The last time I was there, I absolutely could not find any food to eat in Shilin, and the same thing happened again. Bruno managed to get himself a Hotstar chicken cutlet though…. which he finished all on his own (I can’t eat poultry). We then got back to Ximending where I went for 楊排骨酥麵, something which was also recommended by HWZ travel forum members. I was limping quite badly at that point, so the pain and hunger made me rather aggressive and short tempered… I ordered the 排骨酥冬粉汤, while Bruno ordered just the 排骨酥汤 because he was full with the chicken cutlet already. It was actually quite good! At least I liked it pretty much. The stir-fried kangkong was a tad salty though…
By the time we got back to the hotel, I took off my socks and waow…. my right big toe was awfully red and swollen. I have NO idea what is wrong with it, to be honest. I took my nail clipper and tried to clip away most of the nail from the side… but it’s still painful as fuck (for the next few days too). I couldn’t even bend my toe because it would hurt really really bad. Sigh. At that point I suspected it’s not really ingrown toenail (since most was clipped away), but I really didn’t know what else could cause it to swell and hurt like that. Oh well…
We packed our bags again because we would be spending the next 2 nights at an airbnb in 九分(Jiufen). To be honest, the pain from my toe was killing whatever excitement I was feeling…
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