Taiwan Family Holiday - Lifehouse church and Xinyi

Taiwan day 2

This morning we headed out by train to visit Lifehouse church.  We have visited their services in Osaka many times and I knew they had planted a church here in Taipei.  I love their services because I know they are bilingual and everyone is so friendly and welcoming.  There is nothing like attending church overseas to help feel like a local too! 

To get there we caught the MRT to Taipei City Hall. The train system here is so easy to use.  It's just like Hong Kong but a more spacious, cleaner, less crowded and more courteous version of what we are used to.  People actually leave the special seats for people in need free and everybody offered seats to my kids. What a different place we would live in if this was the norm.  We decided to purchase an Easycard for the adults and kids travel free.  After a deposit is paid for the card, you simply top up the card as needed and tap on and off for each ride or entry into various locations like the Taipei Zoo.

We were too early for the 11am church service so we went for a wander around the back lanes for a cafe and stumbled upon a real gem called Liang Liang Hao that specialises in jaffas a.k.a cheese toasties. We didn't need more breakfast but we find jaffas hard to refuse.  We ordered both a strawberry/cheese and a red bean/cheese jaffa.  They have an English menu with lots of photos so ordering was easy.  They also sell chicken wings and cinnamon rolls - basically a strange assortment of delicious treats.  They provided gloves to eat the jaffas with. Is this place not great or what?  The kids devoured their strawberry/cheese jaffa.  The grown ups loved the red bean version.  I ordered an apple juice for the kids and it was surprisngly freshly cold-pressed!

Then it was off to church.

The kids amazingly went into the kids program without a single protest and we had a great time being able to listen to the service uninterrupted.  Actually there were only four kids in the program so our kids had a ball and loved the attention.  We had to drag them out of church to leave.

Commune A7

Our plan for the rest of the day was to explore the Xinyi area en route to Simple Market - a local hipster market held every weekend within a collection of heritage buildings.

One place we walked past was Commune A7 and immediately made a detour for it because we saw go karts!  There was a very short queue for The Hubs and Mr A to try it out.  Some how we got Mr R to sit it out and watch by occupying him with a bag of banana chips.   Some little kids could steer their karts with real skills.  The verdict from my boys was it was so much fun.

After they completed their 5 minutes(!) on the circuit we walked around the rest of Commune A7.  It is a really cool outdoor food court made up of modern food trucks and food stands with a huge variety of different cuisines on offer. The whole place is clearly really well run and even the portaloos were well maintained and clean. 

We stopped for Japanese rice bowls and had a Churashi bowl and a beef and truffle onsen egg bowl. Both were delicious, fresh and as always the service was so lovely. 

If we didn't have another location to go to this would have made an excellent place to sit back and enjoy a cold drink while snacking on lots of different foods.  There was ample seating and it looks like there are often music performances. 

Simple Market

The walk to Simple Market was supposedly just 15 minutes but with the heat of summer approaching, it felt quite arduous.  If Mr R hadn't fallen asleep in the stroller, I think a taxi would have been a better choice.

We found Simple Market quite hidden behind a small set of old buildings with no obvious signage. But we knew we were in the right place once we found heaps of young couples taking Instagram shots next to the old building facades and doors.  Taiwan has done a great job at preserving many historical buildings like these to promote and develop their growing music, food and design scene.

The market itself was made up of just two rows of stalls selling everything from succulents to one table that literally had 3 plates of quiches for sale by the slice. Inside one of the buildings flagging the side of the market was a cafe cum lifestyle store called good cho's which was worth a look at for some snacks, homewares and gifts.  We visited the building on the opposite side and it was a gallery with displays of old Taipei homes and furnishings. 

As we were about to leave I smelt coffee and approached the Impct stall to have a try of their cold brew.  We had a great chat with one of the sales team and bought a box of coffee to support their company that builds schools in developing countries.  You can read more about their work and support their work here.  

ATT 4 Fun

We decided to make our way back to a shopping mall for some air conditioning respite and headed to the ATT 4 fun mall.  The place was packed with people.  While there are clothing stores and a Tokyu Hands for lifestyle goods, most of the floors are for food!  We finally settled in Love One Cafe on the 4th Floor food court and ordered...afternoon tea? I have no idea what meal this was but it involved ice cream, brownies and pancakes at nearly 4pm.  Talk about being in holiday mode. 

The unidentified extra meal between lunch, snack and dinner

After this we headed back to the Taipei 101 MRT and trained back to our stop near home.  We still needed dinner so we wandered the back streets and settled on Dosan Kanroku for a simple meal of udon and tempura.  Yes we seem to eat a lot of Japanese food in Taiwan. 

On our way home we passed a Tai-Croissant outlet and I was so full but I couldn't resist an apple and cinnamon tayaki.  Basically this is a Japanese fish shaped tayaki made with a croissant exterior instead of the typical wafer batter.  So buttery, crispy and delicious.  I have to add that I tried to order in Mandarin since I can say 'ping guo' but when i spoke the sales guy said in English "Apple?" And I just laughed and said "yes, thanks".