Day 7

Today started like any other day with cereal.

After my quick exercise (gotta do something to at least slightly offset the ridiculous amounts of food I'm consuming) I met Christine so we could be off for lunch.  We got a little lost on the way but took a (slightly creepy) cab ride to our destination.  I was thrilled to try another one of Christine's all time favorite drinks here.  This one was milk&boba drink where the tapioca had been cooked in black raw sugar, making it extremely sweet.  It is added to whole milk and the only thing flavoring it is this ridiculously caramely sweet tapioca.  It was so sweet and so good.
Lunch was another taste of typical Taiwanese food, at an amazing hole in the wall close to the most prestigious university in the country.  We had a pork-bun-sandwich thing; lean pork, fatty pork, cilantro, pickled something and peanut powder wrapped in a delicious bun.  This was followed by two soups- one was broth with pig intestine, and the other broth with chunks of pork and corn.  I'm not gonna lie, I was a little squeamish about trying the pork intestine, but it was actually surprisingly delicious.
On our way home we stopped at an adorable French bakery and picked up a few loaves for the following days voyage to Japan.  After powering through an intense blog entry Christine and I devoured one of them with some Gouda cheese, and then I crashed.
On our way to dinner via Chiang Kai Shek memorial hall I picked up a gourmet iced latte at the closest 7-11.  We were then off to another hole-in-the-wall classic, the main course being those burn in your mouth dumplings I had heard so much about; Xiao Long Bao- small basket dumplings.  We got the classic pork filled ones which reminded me a lot of potstickers or wontons.  Then there was beef with cucumber and scallions wrapped in a pancake, cabbage, and a sesame seed tortilla stuffed with red bean for desert.  Two thumbs up to all of it.

Then there was a margarita at the salsa club, and now we're back home, snacking as we pack and pull an all nighter before a long day of travel.