I probably had one of the most miserable flights I’ve ever taken. And if anyone knew me back in high school, the flight I had to take with my family to Orlando on our way to DisneyWorld used to be the worst. That one had a screaming baby on it with an indifferent set of parents. Oh yeah… and they had a misbehaving 8 year old who would throw things. Definitely pre-911 days. Oh did I mention we flew through a thunderstorm and lightening hit our plane?
This trip was miserable… more so than being trapped with a screaming baby for 3 hours and getting random things chucked at our heads. Our flight out to Taiwan was miserable. And long. I think Sam dealt with it better than I did. He took his Advil PM and knocked out. I was stuck in a seat where the recline wouldn’t stay reclined and about 4 hours into the flight, we hit turbulence. Not the occasional bump and drop, but constant shaking. Up and down. Side to side. I curled up and whimpered. An hour later I started turning pale. An hour after that I was scrambling to find an airsick bag. An hour after THAT and 4 airsick bags later I wanted this trip to be over. I think Sam blissfully slept through all of it. He woke up a few times to check on me but I was a mess. We had 4 straight ours of side to side, up and down turbulence. Apparently I wasn’t the only person to get sick on the plane. The whole plane was getting sick. Worst part was that I’d look at the time and I’d see that we still had 7 hours left of the flight. Everytime the plane took a deep drop and my stomach fluttered, I could only think about the 35000 feet below us. I didn’t think I’d survive to gorge myself at the night markets.
Since I generally blog about food, I took a quick snapshot of the food EVA served us. Not too shabby!
Dinner consisted of a beef and tomato dish with potatoes (potatoes were subpar) along with Oreos cookies and a fabulous roll!
Post turbulence, I ordered the congee breakfast. I’ve never been so happy to eat airplane congee.
When we landed, I had never been so happy to be on the ground. We grabbed our stuff and disembarked, made it through customs, got our luggage and found my Uncle Steve who woke up at 4AM in Taipei to pick us up. Thank you Uncle Steve. 
He took us back to the Sam’s grandparent’s place in the Tianmu neighborhood of Taipei and we got breakfast across the street. This place is famous for their fried Taiwanese donuts (you-tiao) and their shian-bing. Its super flakey and crisp.
They’re open 24 hours. *drool*
Warm sweet soy milk and a sweet rice ball (they make them into rolls in TW)
And Uncle Steve spoiled us by ordering XLB for breakfast!! XLB!! FOR BREAKFAST!!!! @ 7AM!!! *in love with TW*
Afterwards, Sam went back to his grandparents and I proceeded to head out with Uncle Steve to start my Taipei errands. We had booked our wedding portraits out here in the states and I needed to go pick out the wedding dresses to wear. Since we heard that my cousin Audrey (on my Uncle Daphne’s side of the family) and her mom was also in TW, we met up with them and my first cousin Alice, along with Mom for lunch. And my gluttony trip started:
Shrimp Fried Rice
I don’t know the name of this dish but it was braised silky tofu with a luscious sauce… texture was very similar to agedashi tofu but it was ten times better.
River shrimp sauteed w/ lotus bulb. I would hate to be the assistant who had to sit there and shell/devein all of these shrimp. They were nothing like bay shrimp, even though they were similar in size but the texture was crisper, firmer, and they were sweeter. And they didn’t have a murky ocean-y taste to them. Freshest tasting shrimp I’ve ever had!
Steamed clam broth:
Braised Rock Cod w/ a fabulous sauce
Some sort of chicken stew dish
Sorry for the crappy images, as I got more and more into the meal, I had to be reminded to take pictures… and I ended up snapping one quick one so I could shovel more food into my face instead of taking 10 and hoping for one good picture!
Uncle Steve drove mom, Alice and I to Montmartre Wedding Photography where I proceeded to get shoved into about 15 different dresses. I was so over it by the 3rd hour. Quick drive back up to Tianmu and a dinner with Sam’s grandfather were we had knife cut beef noodle soup (no picture) and I passed out into blissful sleep.