Day 4

First day waking up in Taipei.
First breakfast in Taipei: honey nut cheerios.
Something really cool about Taipei is there's a gym where you can go for about $2 an hour, and it isn't too far from Christine's house.  We went there, and it was lovely, and then of course by the time we got back to the house where Christine's angelic roomie was preparing us lunch, I was very hungry and equally grumpy.  Nothing if not consistent, Christine was amused/not concerned with my plight.
Unsurprisingly, the feast was well worth the wait- tofu-spagetti, garlic spinach, two other types of tofu, the tenderest chicken ever, bamboo, and noodle soup awaited us.  To top it off, desert was a "sweet soup."  Christine described it best: "it's this sweet broth with this lychee type stuff that isn't really lychee, and mushroomy stuff but it isn't mushroom..." The "mushroomy stuff" kinda tasted like cartilage, but Christine's roomie said it was vegetarian. Go figure.

From there we took the most picturesque MRT ride ever to where we tried to ride a gondola up a beautiful foresty mountain where there's a food court, a collection of tea rooms and gorgeous views of Taipei.  We tried to time it so that we'd be on the gondola for the sunset; unfortunately, the wait was 3 1/2 hours, and it would've been dark by the time we got on.  We ended up taking a cab to the top.  Stepping out of the cab, we were greeted with one of the most horrible stenches you can imagine.  I mentioned it to Christine and her friends, and they bursted out laughing- "it's stinky tofu!!"  I had read about this mysterious bean curd in the guide books, but couldn't have imagined how poignant the smell they were describing actually was.  Of course, I had to try it, but not before the chair I was sitting in decided to pick a fight with me for trying to scoot in without getting out with it.  The rusty chair won, resulting in the bandaging of my nail, the state it will probably remain in for the duration of my trip.  The tofu was not as bad as it smelled, and the sauce on it was actually really good.  Overall, it was pretty tasty.  Nonetheless, I don't think I would eat it again.  The smell stayed with me for a few hours, and I don't think I would want to go through that again.  We walked around the gorgeous picturesque mountain and picked a tea place to rest where we tried to watch to sunset, but either a mountain or the smog was in the way.  My coffee addiction kicked in right then so I got a cappuccino, but I got to taste everyone else's tea- there was one that tasted like oolong, one that tatsted like flowers, and a third that tasted like hot tang.


We rode the gondolas back down (terrifying!) and went to this restaurant famous for its spicy food.  Since most of the markets haven't been open because of the new year they had a modified menu which (apparently) was pretty disappointing, but I thought the food was really, really good!  I had the most AMAZING silky delicious tofu ever in the history of the world.  There was also tender chicken, super spicy beef with chillies, cabbage with bacon and green beans.  It was super spicy, a little too spicy for some people at the table- my eyes definitely watered and my nose definitely ran- but I was very pleased.

We all came back to Christine's place, hung out, changed our clothes, left, went to some lounge where we had an amazing lychee cocktail thing, came home and went to sleep.