Taiwan Diary #30: 2Gether Cafe

Today I want to introduce a tiny, but quite adorable cafe in Taipei. 

It's called 2gether, as in "Happy Together".

This cafe is famous for its marshmallows, and has two branches. The one I visited was the 晴光店

The adress is Zhongshan District, Lane 183, Section 2, Zhongshan N Rd, 4號

And it's right in the middle between Zhongshan Elementary School station and Minquan West Road.

The interior is adorable, lots of Toast plushies everywhere~

That's actually because the cafe is famous for its variety of unique toasts, and that Toast plush is actually their mascot. They're sold there too, but at a slightly expensive price.

They also had a paper figure of a "German" house (obviously with toast), which was slightly random.

You can also take photos with the plushies with your own camera (for free) or you pay a small amount of NTD to get a Polaroid photo taken by one of the employees.

Space-wise, this cafe is tiny and doesn't have much seating. But they put a lot of effort into their decorations, which is always appreciated.

the menu, unfortunately, is exclusively in Chinese.

But don't worry, if you download a small dictionary app called Pleco before your trip you can still figure out what to order. Even I couldn't read everything, so digital dictionaries are real lifesavers.

The drinks they offer vary between normal cafe choices, and traditional taiwanese breakfast style such as simple soy milk.
I opted for a Matcha Latte.

Onto their famous toast~
I orderered a marshmallow Toast, and even the packaging was really cute and perfect for take-away orders as well.

And the toast was delicious too. Super soft marshmallows on top, with white and dark chocolate sauce and crunchy bread underneath.
Extremely sweet though, so be warned.

That's it for today~

hope you enjoyed this blog post and hopefully, some of you find it helpful when planning your trip to Taipei.

Have any of you been there before, or would you like to go?

Tell me in the comments below!

Love, Lydia

Taiwan Travel Diary #28 : ATT4Fun aka Wonderland adventures

Ever wanted to feel like Alice in Wonderland? Look no further ahead! You can do that right after visiting Taipei 101!

If you lived here for a bit, I'm sure you heard of ATT4Fun.

Nightclubs, lots of shopping, the only Forever21 branch in Taipei and an official Ghibli store, you can find all of that right there!

But most importantly, the 4th floor that is home to many cafés and restaurants just looks adorable!

You'll find the famous white rabbit everywhere

The area is seperated into two parts, Midnight and Afternoon Tea.

Both are gorgeous, but look very different.

The entrance to the midnight area has Alice in Wonderland animations being projected onto mist in the air, which looks amazing! Don't forget to look up when going through here!

Generally speaking, the midnight area tends to be more gorgeous and beautiful, while the afternoon area looks cuter.

But both have lots of places perfect for taking photos!

There's a greek restaurant there too, which I heard is quite good (haven't tried it yet though)

Now onto the afternoon area:

Doesn't this place look super adorable?

And every hour, the lights change colours too!

There's quite a few dessert places in this area, including ice-cream filled Taiyaki at Humpty Dumpty

My favourite place to eat at is called Cheese Papa

Why you might ask? Because unlike most other restaurants and cafés in this (or any ohter shopping mall in Xiny), it's cheap!

They have lots of affordable Sets for one or two people.

I usually choose a waffle set that includes soft-serve ice-cream, a drink and waffles, for only 200NTD. And let me tell you, unless you're super hungry you can easily share this set with another person because those waffles are huge!

My favourite part of the set meal is always the ice-cream though, it's really really good and I might come back just for the ice-cream soon...but with the recent cold temperatures in Taipei, I'm not too sure about when.

Another great thing about their set meals:

You can basically choose any of their drinks from the menu instead of the usual black tea/green tea choice that you normally get when ordering a meal set somewhere! I tried their red bean Matcha drink, and their Mango strawberry milkshake. Both were great.

That's it for today, hope you enjoyed this relatively short blog post and got some ideas for cute places to visit around Taipei! 

Love, Lydia

Taiwan Travel Diary #25: Best pancakes, worst service

For some reason, there are barely any blog posts about cafes in Taipei. Whenever I travel, I try to look up cute places to visit and I usually do so by consulting my dear friend Google for blogs. 

However, that's not the case with Taiwan. Here, I usually try to figure out where to eat, which places to try by scrolling around Instagrams #Taipei Hashtag, and just taking screenshots of whatever looks delicious. Occasionally I even look up the name of a place on Chinese blogs. That doesn't always work out well though.

While my Chinese is okay-ish, I'm usually way too lazy to read through a whole blog post all in Chinese, so I never really know anything about the Cafes I visit. Except that their food looks good.

This place is one of those. The first time I went, a classmate and friend had looked it up, and their panncakes looked amazing~

They offer mostly Hokkaido style desserts and thus, the cafes interior also has a northern, slightly rusty feel to it.

Now, before it gets confusing:

The first time I went, I went to Cafe LeTao, near Sun-Yatsen memorial station.

The second time, I went to Cafe Konayuki.

Two different locations, two different names, but basically the same cafe run by the same owner.

I'll generalize a bit here, since my experiences in both places was basically the same.

Both Cafes interior is quite simple, with neutral colours.

They offer different desserts, sandwiches, drinks, etc.

All of it looks delicious.

Now here's the catch, and one thing i absolutely dislike about Taipei.

Minimum charge.

Lots of places tell you every person on your table needs to order at least 100NTD (or any different amount), or order at least a drink, or simply that every person needs to order something.

Which is slightly annoying by itself (since lots of times friends share food etc) BUT this place made it even worse.

Even though my friend and I already both ordered a full meal (pancakes + sandwiches), that's not enough for them. You HAVE to order either a drink or an ice-cream sundae per person.

Which makes the whole experience pretty expensive, as their pancakes alone are already 360 NTD, and the cheapest drinks start from 120NTD (also they taste awful).

So every time i went, i ordered an ice-cream sundae as well as they're not much more expensive than a plain coffee and at least they're something special.

The waiters weren't particually nice either, and definitely not worth the usual 10% service fee.

So that's the fruit sundae (190NTD, I guess?), not really anything special but ok.

Their Matcha / Red Bean sundae is a lot better as it includes delicious chestnuts and cereals.

The one reason why I'll probably end up going to this awful café again even though I hate how they make you spend so much money:

Their pancakes. They're amazing.

They're super light, and fluffy, and sweet and just so, so good.

So that's it~ i'm not sure if i could recommend this place to anyone, they have the absolutely best pancakes i have ever eaten in my life, but also their service is super unfriendly and if you only want to eat pancakes, it's kind of frustrating that they make you order more.

If you're planning to eat pancakes and ice-cream sundae anyways, go for it.

If not....well, decide for yourself. Just don't order their cafe latte, you'll end up only drinking the free water anyways.

Love, Lydia