Taiwan Diary #31: Cute character restaurant Aranzi Bistro 阿朗基咖啡

Taipei has an abundance of cute themed cafés or restaurants. This one i actually discovered while scrolling through the #taipei tag on Instagram. 

Here's the address:

No. 468, Section 4, Ren'ai Rd, Xinyi District, Taipei City, Taiwan 110

The characters in this bistro were all based on Aranzi Aronzo, designed by Kinuyo Saito and Yoko Yomura and are cute as well as a bit weird and dorky. Definitely not the kind of overly pink and cutesy character that is usually incredibly popular in Taiwan (like Hello Kitty)

The restaurant also sells a lot of merchandise of the characters.

Something I found really interesting were those Aranzi magazines with lots of photographs in them.

The decorations are absolutely adorable as well.

Prices are quite expensive, just like in any other themed restaurant.

The character cakes are 550NTD each, and are also sold in small booths in food malls in other places too. Every character has a differently flavoured cake

I got the Matcha flavoured one, which was pretty good but more like a mousse than a cake.

The plate it was served on was adorable though, the cake fit perfectly on the space the characters head was printed on the plate.

I also got a Matcha Latte which was delicious.

And had the same character on it.

I also got the pizza that was disappointingly small, and not that good. But good Pizza is generally not easy to find in Taipei.

All in all i'd say this is an adorable restaurant, with mediocre food. Just go for the cute cake and coffee, leave out the savory dishes.

Love, Lydia

The cutest coffee shop in Hamburg and other food recommendations

Hey everyone~ surprise surprise, i am actually updating this blog again!

But this time i'll be writing about my city trip to Hamburg, an absolutely gorgeous German city.

I only spent 4 days there in total, but I can't wait to go back sometime.

We took the overnight bus there, which took a total of 10 hours and arrived in the morning.

Obviously, we were starving~ for some nice breakfast so we headed over to a lovely place called Sternenschanze - the Hipster area.

Which is super artsy, lots of small stores and interesting restaurants.

We spotted this lovely gem and decided to eat breakfast there.

Here's the address if you want to visit:

Herr Max 

Konditorei & Patisserie 

Schulterblatt 12 

20357 Hamburg 

The café is open from 10am to 9pm.

The interior of this place is really adorable. Everythings pastel, and looks antique-ish, a bit worn down but still very pretty.

The cakes  they have there look fantastic, and i would have loved to try every single one of them!

We ordered something else though.

Due to being super tired, I got an ice-cream coffee and a small apple pie. 

The apple pie was 3,50€ and i think the ice-cream coffee was around 5€. A bit pricy, but totally worth it.

My sister got a Lavender tea, and to my surprise it was actual lavender instead of a simple tea bag.

She also got a breakfast plate that looked really~ delicious.

They also have all sorts of Lemonade there.

While the café was already very cute, the one thing that surprised me was how nice the waiters were. They put nice flowers on our table after we sat down

And because there was a construction site outside the cafe that was pretty loud, which still wasn't really the cafes fault, they gave us a free beverage each as compensation.

I got a mint tea with fresh mint leaves and my sister got a rhabarber lemonade (yes that is a thing in Germany)

Important fact for summer:

They also have ice-cream.

They also have vegan ice-cream, so dig in!

One day, i hope i get to visit Hamburg again. It's such a pretty and artsy city! 

Before i end this post, here are two more restaurant recommendations:

Hate Harry at Sternenschanze

They have really delicious burgers there!

and Strandperle

perfect for breakfast  at the beach!

so that's it for now, hope you got some nice impressions of Hamburg from this blog post!

Love, Lydia~~

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