Taipei - Day 3

Still dreaming about soymilk, I left the hotel vowing to eat the first interesting-looking thing I ran across for breakfast. A small outdoor cafe full of people slurping up delicious-smelling bowls of noodles (despite the heat!) was the winner. I figured, what the heck, 이열치열! (Fight fire with fire...)



















Yum. I hopped on the MRT to visit the Confucius Temple. Temples are so colorful here:






































After visiting several temples I noticed that people like to leave cans of Pringles as offerings. I wouldn't turn down a can of Pringles. Or a can of Spam:














I think this makes my list of top ten weird things I've seen in a vending machine:















Afterwards, I decided to spend the afternoon getting lost in the National Palace Museum. But my "tourist map" had a listing for a cake and pastry museum near the bus stop, so of course I had to check it out:















Only to be majorly disappointed. Not one delicious-looking pastry in sight. Just a room full of people eating bowls of soup. I thought I had the wrong place but a woman told me that I couldn't visit the "museum" then since it was too crowded at the moment. Then she gestured towards the aforementioned people inside, eating soup.

That's still a bit of a head-scratcher.

No matter, I took a detour through an alley market on my way back to the bus stop. This nice cold soymilk cheered me up:



















Unfortunately, pictures aren't allowed inside the National Palace Museum. That place is HUGE. I didn't even attempt to look at the other buildings beside the main one. After several hours of walking all around and trying not to get swallowed by huge tour groups, I treated myself to some tea at the top-floor restaurant: