GYA16: Afternoon Bubble Tea

Itinerary: 翰林茶館 Hanlin Tea，大安運動中心 Daan Sports Center

The temperature dropped 10 degrees and it’s the low 70s today.  I even pulled out my long sleeves.  Yay!  Finally some cool weather!

After a morning where I buzzed around doing a bit of this and a bit of that and then felt like I got nothing accomplished, we headed out for some Afternoon English Tea at Cutty Sark.  We had wanted to go yesterday but decided last minute that with antsy children it may not be the best choice.

Basically, my tummy has been tempting me to go out every day.

We took the MRT to Taipei 101 to go to Att 4 Fun mall.  However, the darn Cutty Sark was closed!  That’s the English afternoon tea place I tried 3 years ago.  The one we tried to go to yesterday was closed too.  Since it was already 2pm, we decided to go to Hanlin Tea instead.  This is one of the 2 stores that claim to be the one who invented the bubbles in bubble tea.

Lunch took us over 2 hours because service was SLOW.  The wait staff had that 愛理不理 attitude.  Considering tip is an automatic 10%, it’s annoying and for that reason I wouldn’t go again, even if the food redeemed the service.

I ordered a lemon bubble tea for Thumper and she ended up sharing because it’s so huge.  (It has to be because it costs $160!)  We paired our bubble tea with little snacky dishes like fried tofu, shumai, popcorn chicken, fried green beans, etc.  Our favorite was the green beans and the old-fashion chicken nuggets.

Now I want to try their competitor, 春水堂 Chun Shui Tang.

After lunch, we decided to explore the bus system and head to Daan Sports Center, since I didn’t love the swimming pool at Taipei City College.  Their chlorine smell was super strong due to the low ceiling.

The city of Taipei has sports centers in some districts for its citizens.  Isn’t that great?  Private swim lessons for 4 people will cost $4000/person for 10 classes, which works out to $13.50/hour class/person.  It’s definitely more expensive than City College but the facility looks much better.

After visiting the Sports Center, we rode the bus back to the MRT and picked up our weekly grocery from 主婦聯盟 Coop.  We’ve decided to order 1 basket of fruit and 1 basket of veggies every week.  Like a CSA you don’t get to choose, so I get to explore some Taiwanese vegetables.

We’re trying to take swim classes 3 times a week in the morning.  In other news, I’ve signed Astroboy up for a second art class.  So now our days are kind of full and I need to make an excel spreadsheet to make sure I don’t over schedule myself.

As it is, I constantly feel like we’re not homeschooling enough because I keep wanting to go out and play.  And that’s okay in itself if I had planned to not homeschool.  That way I can purely enjoy my time out without feeling guilty.  I’ve got a calendar full of places I want to visit this time around!