Itinerary: Chinese breakfast, Traditional market, TCAP, Costco, signup for Art class
We had a really good day today. Good days seem to come with some advance planning. But argh, I just realized I didn’t take many pictures!
The kids all woke up relatively early today, around 7:30am. Since we’d decided last night to go down to have that Chinese breakfast, they had some time to do their “must-do” homeschooling before we headed out at 9am.
Chinese breakfast is just a bus ride down the hill. Unfortunately, we showed up too late and the 燒餅 and 紅豆餅 was sold out. So I made do with some cold soy milk and sesame cake 芝麻餅 instead while the kids had 饅頭夾蛋, mantou with eggs. It cost me $4 to feed 3 people.
We then walked to the MRT station by meandering through the local traditional food market/street. I love traditional markets. You can find many things you need on just one street, in little bitty shops that cram everything in.
First stop is the 兒童樂園 Children’s Amusement Park (TCAP). This is our 3rd time going there after we got our monthly pass for two kids for just $450. Each trip to probably costs me $200 total. Today it was more like $400 between the two kids because they went on the roller coaster 6 times after 1/2 hour at the the ball pen!
I love our monthly pass. AND I found out entrance fee is free for Taipei residents (the address on back of your National ID card) on Wednesdays!
After a quick lunch at the park, we tried out Uber to take us to the Beitou Costco (北投好市多). Taxis in Taipei are $70 for first 1.25km, then $20 for each additional km, plus $5 each 1.40m idling in traffic. Uber charged us $30 to start then $11.5 for each km, plus a per minute cost of $2.00. Our conclusion is that it may be cheaper if there’s no surge charge (we got a 1.4x surge charge).
The Beitou Costco is HUGE, cavernous. It has 3 floors of parking and B1 is the Costco. We also went on a weekday and there was noone there, which is a big contrast to the huge crowd we encountered when we went to the first Costco by 中和.
Sadly, I was not impressed with their book collection, even though I bought two books. The selection was less than the 中和 Costco. One was a a bilingual Winnie the Pooh. We didn’t buy much since we had to carry it back on the MRT. The great thing about small crowd is that we got to try all the samples and Fleur was sold on a pack of butter croissants imported from France. She swears it’s much much better than the croissants we get back in the US.
The nice thing about this Costco is that it’s walking distance to the 關渡 Guandu MRT. Though I’m glad we took the taxi there first and then worked backwards. Because Google Map has you go a roundabout way, but there are directions from Costco pointing you to the shortcut.
It’s a good day because I also managed to make a phone call to Soho Art to sign the kids up for Art class. They have branches in the US and I’ve been eying them for a long time after Eclectic Mama told me about them. They are pricey in the US and apparently pricey in Taipei as well. It’s about $6000 for first 8 classes then $4500 for subsequent classes. Each class lasts 1.5 hours.
I’m excited! We’ve signed up for both a nature study class and an art class. I think I may be able to manage one more class. We were able to walk more today with just 3 kids instead of 5 so I really want to go sightseeing!
As for my crazy neighbor, I feel much much better after talking to several friends, one of whom lives in Taipei with kids and also had a neighbor complain. I think mine’s crazier but my landlord also talked to the neighbor and though the issue isn’t resolved, my landlord says that I shouldn’t hear from him for awhile. I’m thankful for not having to listen to 30 minutes of useless complaints that lead to nowhere.
