the heart as it is | courage • grief • beauty

As today was a bit of a rainier and cooler day, we decided to go somewhere where we could be inside – hence, Taipei 101 ! We started the day off by going to a local breakfast shop. I ordered soymilk, carrot cake, friend onion pancakes with egg, and a pork and egg sandwich for Jacob. We also grabbed another savory pastry for Jacob on the way back:

We then headed to the subway station to go on our way to Taipei 101. In one of the stations, there was a bakery so I wanted to try a matcha cookie that I saw. The cookie was good, but the matcha flavor was not really there. Jacob acted as my hand model today ! :

We eventually made our way to Taipei 101 ! Photos never justify how massive this thing is. The Taipei 101 MRT station exit gives this view right as you step out:

The first five-ish floors are a high-end mall, meaning we could only really walk around and not buy anything ! We then got to the 5th floor, which is the observatory entrance that takes you to the 89th floor. At that point it was around noon and we had bought 1:00 pm tickets. I thought we could wait in line because the wait was 50 minutes at that point, but a lady told us otherwise so we continued to walk around the mall/rest. This is when we went back to the basement floor food court for me to get a rose milk tea:

Right after getting the milk tea, we headed to the 89th floor ! :

There was also this floral installation scattered throughout the 89th floor:

The giant gold damper that keeps the building in place and apparently reduces movement by 40%. Physics is insane y’all (purposely got people in this photo for scale):

When leaving the 89th floor, there was an impressionist art collection of Taipei 101. Here are some pieces that I thought were really nice:

Once we were back down to the mall level, we went to the food court. Jacob got some pizza and I got this delicious sea bass congee ! I don’t know how to explain how good it was. I would come back just to eat it again. I also got this matcha dessert from a Family Mart in the tower that had a really good matcha taste:

At that point, it was almost 4:00 pm so we decided to head back. Here is a view of the tower we saw going back to our Airbnb: