Fishy Pesto Pasta, Tortilla Shells, and Tatung University

I feel like I'm letting my fans down.  I haven't posted since last thursday and it's been a whole weekend!  I'd like to say it's cause I was busy (and don't get me wrong, I wasn't sitting at home the whole time), but for some reason the blog never happened.

Well I've found a good place to spend my pocket change that has been accumulating in a bowl on the table: Bubble Tea.  I was feeling parched so I thought before I dug into some serious blogging I'd quench my thirst with a tasty bubble tea.  I tried ordering a green milk tea but somehow I ended up with oolong milk tea with mini pearls.  No idea how that happened because I'm really used to ordering green milk tea from the other bubble tea place but whatever.  A change is always welcome.  I digress.  Here's my Friday night!

Anne and I left work around 6:30pm and headed for somewhere around the Zhongshan District (slightly north of Taipei main station).  It was raining "cats and dogs" as Anne said and I got drenched clammering from the covered sidewalk and into the bus.  I had my umbrella with me but I didn't realize that the water drops were so plump.

The ride up to Zhongshan was about 40minutes or so and we made a transfer at Gongguan MRT station area onto another bus.  The whole ride was quite fun and interesting because when you're on the bus, you can actually see stuff around you as opposed to the MRT where it's all mostly underground.

Anne was like a sightseeing bus announcer.  Every minute or so she'd pipe up about some interesting place or historic/famous landmark.  We passed the hotel that Lady Gaga stayed in while she was here.  Also went through a very popular road well known for their... gentlemen's clubs.  Anne was telling me that, apparently there's lots of these nice looking clubs where business men can go and have their meetings and maybe a girl will go into the room and "take her shirt off" lol.  She didn't know what to call these establishments.  To be honest I didn't really know either so I told her it was called Gentlemen's Club.  It sounded old fashion and kind of perverted so it seemed appropriate.

We reached our destination and the torrential rain had stopped.  lucky!  Anne walked me around a block, passing by this famous temple.  It was about 6 stories tall, adorned with red paint and gold.  There was an asian gate in front with two stone lions.  My crappy phone camera pic doesn't really do it justice.

Famous temple

Another block and we'd reached our dinner destination: All Pasta!  It's a privately owned (non-franchise) pasta place situated right next to Anne's old college dorm room.  She said she used to frequent this place back in the day and when she wants pasta, this is one of the top spots!  There wasn't any line and we were able to get a seat immediately.  Anne said we were lucky!

Anne's old pasta haunt: All Pasta!

As usual the menu was a basic piece of paper with Chinese and prices.  I think I actually like this format when I'm with a native speaker because I don't really have to think about what to order.  I just let them order whatever.  Anne highly recommended me her favourite dish so that's what I had!

Anne ordered the clam pesto spaghetti

Creamy Pesto Spaghetti with seaweed, fish flakes, and fish eggs

Pictured above was my entree.  A pesto spaghetti adorned with dried nori (seaweed), fish flakes, tobiko (mini fish roe), and a piece of garlic bread.  Sounds a bit out there, and I've definitely never had anything like it before which always gives me a thrill.  haha.  Imagine a really tasty creamy pesto sauce, but then throw in a subtle taste of the ocean (seaweed and fish flakes) and that's sort of what it tasted like.  I'd recommend it to anyone who likes pasta, and isn't afraid to try something a bit different.

After some pleasant dinner conversation we left All Pasta.  There was a bit of a food night market around the corner which we walked through.  Apparently a lot of famous people come here and many of the vendors have celebrity signatures on their booths.

To be honest, I'm not sure how you could order something from this place.  Things are looking pretty fresh!

The place pictured on the right is another one of Anne's old haunts.  It's a noodle soup place.  What's special about it, is that their noodles are more like.. "dough balls".  After you order something with the noodles in it, he'll wip out this big bag of dough, plomp it down in front of the boiling broth, and then proceed to rapidly tear 1 inch flat circular pieces from the dough and throw them into the broth.  He's probably tearing 2-3 pieces per second.  So it's flying in there!  I wasn't hungry but I ordered something to go (da bao) because I wanted to try the disco noodle things.  There were 2 kids running around.  The little boy must have been around 4 years old.  Anne said she remembers when he was just a little baby.  Time flies!

balls

Alright.  Onto one of the main missions of the evening: Florida Bakery.  The previous weekend when I went to the CKS Memorial Park in Cihu, Daxi with the East West Culture Project I met Damien, an American who has been here for about 7 months, and he mentioned that Florida Bakery was the place to buy tortilla shells.  Mid-week I told Anne about the place and she researched it and realized it's right across from her university!  She knew of the place but didn't realize it was the place I was seeking.

You had me at "Florida"

The bakery has baskets upon baskets of yummy looking treats.  Like a candy shop for people who don't like candy, but cookies and baked treats.  It was a bit expensive though.  Similar to what I'd think it would cost in Canada.

Yes!  Yes!  Yes!

We glanced over the sweets but rested our eyes upon our prize.  Tortilla shells!  It was glorious.  I thought they didn't exist but here we were standing in front of 5 different flavours!  Tomato, Spinach, Roast Red Pepper, and Regular.  They even had 6" corn tortillas!  I bought a 12 pack of regular and a pack of tomatoe.  Both combined cost about $6.  Very reasonable considering it's a rare commodity.  Oh yah, and the place also sells pita bread. Score!

Tatun University.  Tatung is a famous brand here in Taiwan (known for their Rice Cookers)

After purchasing the goods, we went across the street to check out Anne's old university.  It has a large design department, which is why she attended this particular uni.

It must have been past 9 or 10pm by this time (still very warm out).  There was almost no one walking around and the security guard wasn't really paying attention so we walked straight into the campus past the gate.

The campus has a really cool nature feel to it.  Lots of trees everywhere, with roots and branches splaying above, with little roots hanging down to capture the humidity from the air.  It felt like we were in a little jungle with paths forking left and right into different buildings.  There was also a beautiful building reminiscent of Rome's famous Pantheon.  I snapped some photos but it was simply too dark.  Next time!

Jig and band saws galore.  The machines looked like they've seen their fair share of students

One of the buildings we explored into was Anne's old design workshop.  It felt like an empty warehouse with a bunch of old machines plunked randomly into the room.  The space wasn't really designed at all but it was interesting to see.  Our workshop at work was pretty messy but Anne showed me their work area which was 10 times worse than ours at work (still no excuse!  Thanks to Pupu for cleaning it up on Friday).

Rows of creamy beige pink lockers... nostalgic?

After Tatung University, we made our way to Yuanshan MRT station.  On the way we passed the Zhongshan Soccer stadium.  A very Chinese looking stadium from the outside.  Apparently it's where Beyoncé performed recently.

While we rounded the corner of the stadium a large passenger aircraft screamed down across the MRT tracks and right over our heads!  What a rush!  The Taipei airport (not the main international one) was less than 2 kms away and the landing approach leads the planes to fly right over this MRT station.  Planes are amazing and watching something so huge and so loud flying 100 feet over our heads was amazing.  A nice way to end our evening I'd say!  This is where Anne takes her bus back to Taoyuan and it's where I boarded the train to MRT back home.

Another fun Friday night Anne! Thank you for the language exchange and good times :)

Yuanshan MRT station.  Yes above ground!  Ride back to Qizhang was about 25 min