Fine Dining with Fine Friends

Taiwan is a reunion place of sorts. Not just for Lil & Pauline but for me too! I haven’t seen Rochelle, my veg buddy, since I left Tak. Since her family is living in Taiwan she came back for three weeks to see them, and it happened to work out perfectly that I’m here at the same time.

So when Lili and Alex talked about visiting the temples of Taipei & the famous zoo I jumped at the chance to meet Rochelle for a vegetarian lunch.

Lili and Alex enjoyed their day. Aside from the Chinese temples they also saw turtles mating, some lions, and a few hippos. The turtles are not the only the ones mating and because of this the panda exhibit is closed. No panda spotting for Lil and Alex.

Rochelle and I met at Sun-Yat Sen Memorial Hall which sits next to a beautiful park. We walked to a little vegetarian restaurant where you pick your meal and pay by weight. It was delicious, and I piled high in excitement as you can see.

After lunch we took a little walk around the park then found a seat at Big Tom’s Cafe right near the water with a great view of Taipei 101. We ordered green teas & ice cream. Rochelle picked the green tea and I went with soy cinnamon vanilla!

Interesting little spoon…

We plan to go back here today and re-live the entire experience because it was just that good.

For dinner we all planned to meet back up at none other than the Hello Kitty Cafe! Now, I don’t love Miss Kitty but I do love singing her jingle from one of her episodes.

When my sweet little niece Kayla was younger she watched this Kitty episode ALL the time, and she would fall asleep to it every time! The disc would stay on the menu page and the jingle would keep repeating ad nauseum. Now I love it because it’s so catchy and fun to sing everytime Hello Kitty pops up, and it makes me think of her.

My sweet niece Kayla Grace

Rochelle now has it stuck in her head too.

If you know anyone with a 5-letter name go ahead and insert their letters into the jingle. It’s K-A-Y-L-A it’s K-A-Y-L-A it’s Kayla, Kayla Kayla!

We also had another nice dinner with Pauline’s family. Her parents wanted to take us to a real Taiwanese restaurant. I tried lotus flowers which look like onions but taste much sweeter!  We also had some yummy desserts, especially this sesame ball with red bean on the inside served hot.

Taiwanese Hamburger

Omelete, Lotus Flowers, & Rice

Paula eating intestines :-O

Mushrooms

Desserts

More desserts!

With Alice, Paula & her parents

I’ll miss Taipei because of our special friends, but I’m thankful for the memories we made and for their help in getting around! Chinese is a hard language!