This morning after breakfast, we went hiking at Jun Jian Yan Hiking trail which is supposedly a popular hiking trail. It was a good workout as we climbed a lot of stairs and was rewarded with a very good view of the Taipei city, with Taipei 101 in the background.
The weather in Taipei was really nice in the high 70s, which is a little unusual as it usually gets cooler in the winter.
After the hike, we went home for lunch and a little rest before going to check out the hot spring in XinBeitou. There are many different types of hot spring: public ones or private ones inside the hotel. The one below is a public one and you can buy the ticket from the machine below. We didn't go in and was just checking out the area.
Also, there are maps which shows the surrounding area of interest that we can check out. I have to give kudos to the Taipei tourist department as they really do a good job in providing maps and signs for tourists. It wasn't like that when I was young, there was no signs in English nor maps. So if you are new to the area, it was hard to find any place.
There were many small waterfalls around the area as we walk around.
There is also the public library and many people there playing Pokemon Go. I heard that one night, there was 5000 people there trying to catch Pokemon as rare Pokemons are sighted in that area.
If you like hot spring, there are many hotels there offering hot spring packages that you can check out.
One thing to note is that there are quite a few places closed on Monday in Taipei such as the Thermal Valley, Beitou Museum and Taipei zoo, etc. It seems that most of these places are off on Mondays.
After spending a couple of hours here, we left to have dinner at Din Tai Feng which specializes in pork dumplings. This restaurant is very popular worldwide and have a few branches in U.S. as well. We recently have 1 opened in our mall in Northern California and the wait time is usually 2-3 hours. Since this restaurant originated from Taiwan, there are also many branches in Taiwan. We picked the one inside Sogo Mall in Tianmu as it is not as crowded as the other ones. We waited for less than 20 minutes before we were seated.
Their dumplings are freshly made to order and we can see their chefs making the dumplings while waiting.
Wood ear mushrooms in a vinegar dressing
Seaweed and beancurd in a vinegar dressing
Fried pork chop which the kids really love
Shaoxing wine marinated chicken
Stir fry vegetables (not sure what kind of vegetables they are)
Shrimp and pork wonton noodle soup
Braised beef noodle soup
Shrimp fried rice which is my all time favorite of this restaurant.
Noodles with house special spicy sauce
Their famous pork dumpling (Xiao Long Bao in Chinese).
Steamed taro dumpling as dessert
Steamed red bean rice cake as dessert as well
Overall, we had a great dinner and the food tasted great. The service was excellent as the servers were very attentive and even had a cloth bag to cover our jackets and handbags.
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