June Holiday = PSLE Prep

I find it hard to believe that the June holiday has already started. Time seems to pass so fast this year. Marieann is attending the supplementary classes for P6 this entire week and attending study camp for next week. PSLE will be happening in 2 months and a week's time. :S

Rest and Study

Today is the last day of Term 1. The one week March holiday officially starts tomorrow. 
It is going to be a week of rest and study as well for the girls. 

Brisbane/ Gold Coast 2013 Trip Posts

All the posts of our Brisbane/ Gold Coast 2013 trip have been posted and with all the photos uploaded too. Sorry for the delay. To make it easier for those of you who wants to look at the places we visited/ went to, below are the links for each day. Sight-seeing started from the 28 November 2013 onwards.

25 November 2013: Brisbane - Packing
26 November 2013: Brisbane - Packing
27 November 2013: Brisbane - Packing + Friendship
28 November 2013: Brisbane - Packing + University of Queensland + City Sights
29 November 2013: Brisbane - Cafe + Friendship + City Sights
30 November 2013: Brisbane - Pancakes + Aussie Lifestyle + CityCat + South Bank
1 December 2013: Brisbane - Sunday Market + City Sights + Friendship
2 December 2013: Gold Coast - Ocean
3 December 2013: Gold Coast - Shopping + Beach
4 December 2013: Gold Coast - Springbrook National Park + Mt Tamborine + Friendship
5 December 2013: Brisbane - Fortitude Valley/ Chinatown
6 December 2013: Brisbane - Farewell

Thank you very much for your patience. Hope you will enjoy reading my posts on our Brisbane trip.

Holidays

have started for my girls. Their school has started the year-end holidays one week earlier than most primary schools. But no rest for them as they are continuing with their tuition. They need to keep in touch with their work in preparation for next year, especially Marieann as she will be in Primary 6.

Taipei 2013 Trip Posts

All the posts of our Taipei 2013 trip have been posted and with all the photos uploaded too. To make it easier for those of you who wants to look at the places we visited/ went to, below are the links for each day. 

Day 1 in Taipei 2013 Yangmingshan 
Day 2 in Taipei 2013 Tamshui
Day 3 in Taipei 2013 Ximending
Day 4 in Taipei 2013 Ximending
Day 5 in Taipei 2013 (I) Overview
Day 5 in Taipei 2013 (II) Shifen
Day 5 in Taipei 2013 (III) Jingtong
Day 5 in Taipei 2013 (IV) Houtong
Day 5 in Taipei 2013 (V) Shuinadong
Day 5 in Taipei 2013 (VI) Jinguashi
Day 5 in Taipei 2013 (VII) Jiufen
Day 6 in Taipei 2013 Jiufen
Day 7 in Taipei 2013
Day 8 in Taipei 2013 Ximending
Day 9 in Taipei 2013 Home

Thank you very much for your patience. Hope you will enjoy reading my posts on our Taipei trip.

Arrived in Singapore!

Our flight landed at 12:15am, slightly ahead of ETA of 12:30am.We cleared immigration and pick up our luggage by 12:45am. However, the girls' father was nowhere in sight. He was late. :( 
We finally arrived home at 1:30am. By the time, we showered and settled down, it was close to 2:30am. I had to force the girls to go to bed even though they protested strongly. Despite claiming that they were not tired as they have slept in the plane, the girls fell asleep in no time. :) I am pretty tired myself and will sleep soon too. We are back in Singapore safe and sound. Good night, everyone.

Day 9/ Last Day in Taipei 2013

We will be going home today. We woke up early, went to have our breakfast, went to 7-11 store and were back in our room by 9am. We did a final check with our luggage and lazed around watching TV until check-out time.

Won't be having a Chinese breakfast like this anytime soon

Lift lobby on the 6th floor

Lollies bought at 7-11 store :)

My mother's friend came to pick us up at 11am to meet with another group of friends for lunch and later, she would be taking us to the airport. On route to meet with my mother's friends, we passed by the Presidential Office, High Court, Ministry of Justice, etc., which are all within 10 minutes of Taipei Hero House. I only realised now that the area I have been staying in is very safe haha.

Side view of The Presidential Office

Front view of The Presidential Office

Some building that has something to do with Law or Justice

Lunch was at a local (Chinese) restaurant and the food was delicious. I didn't dare to ask my mother's friends to let me take the photos before we eat lol. We arrived at the airport close to 4.15pm. We were really early as check-in counters only opened at 5:25pm. It was a good thing that we arrived early. There was a weighing machine for luggage and out of curiosity, I weighed all our check-in and cabin luggage. I found that my mother's check-in luggage was 5 kg over the limit of 20kg. But our three cabin luggage still had space of 3kg each. On the spot, we repacked some of the items from my mother's check-in luggage into the cabin luggage. In the end, we had exactly 40kg for our two check-in luggage and our cabin luggage was close to 8-9kg each. :) By 5:10pm, we see people queuing up at the check-in counters although they were not opened yet. So we joined the queue. By 5:45pm, we were checked in. Before clearing the customs, we decided to have a light snack as on-flight dinner would only be served after 8:30pm. We had xiao long baos, siew mai and wanton.

By 6:50pm, we cleared customs and were on our way to our Gate. After settling down our cabin luggage at the Gate and with my mother to guard the luggage, the girls and I backtracked to the duty free gift shops we saw on the way as the girls wanted to do last minute shopping with whatever New Taiwan dollars they had left.

New walkway towards the Gates

Art pieces decorating the new walkway

Disney shop - the girls' favourite shop

Hello Kitty! Taiwanese love their kitty :)

Hello Kitty shop - the girls' new favourite shop

We boarded the plane at 7:25pm and we took off at 8:15pm (20 minutes behind schedule). We had the same main dish as on our flight to Taipei, Teriyaki chicken with rice. However, this time round, we were only offered water, coffee or peisi for both our cold and hot beverages. At first, I thought Jetstar only had these three drink items on board until I see them selling all the other drinks on the menu. I am honestly quite upset about this. I pre-purchased the hot meal with the drinks but yet I had less choice than the passengers who were paying on the spot. It was not as if I didn't pay and were getting free drinks. I also didn't see anywhere on their website that pre-purchased meals could only choose from a limited choice of drinks. I may think twice about taking Jetstar for longer than 2 hours so that I don't encounter this problem again.Will definitely be writing in my feedback to Jetstar.

Before departing

We were happily choosing our drinks before we knew of the limited choice we had :(

In the air. Bye bye, Taipei. See you again SOON! :)

We are both happy and sad to leave Taipei, Taiwan. We are happy because we are going home. I am sad because I was at home when I was in Taipei.The girls are sad because they will miss the food and the shopping of cute adorable things. :)

Day 8 in Taipei 2013 - Ximending (西門町)

My mother decides to visit my uncle-in-law again in hospital so the girls and I are free to do what we want! :) We decided that we want to go shopping, most likely back to Ximending again lol.
After breakfast at 9am, we came back to the room to rest and to plan what we wanted to do for the rest of the day since shops at Ximending opens only after 11am. Just then, we noticed a lot of people on the roof top of the Military Police HQ. Our window (on the 6th floor) looked directly across to the rooftop of MP HQ. It seemed the military police were having a practicing session on how to deal with rioters/ protestors on the rooftop lol. Not sure if the whole bunch of military police saw us but it would have been funny with the four of us squeezing round the window to get a closer look. My mother and I also started to pack our luggage so that we don't have to rush tonight. At the same time, we were watching the Korean drama, Smile Again, Donghai! on TV from 10-12noon haha.

A hearty breakfast (Chinese style)

While packing, found these souvenirs bought during our Tamshui and earlier Ximneding trips

More souvenirs that they girls bought for themselves

Presents for the girls from my mother's friend

Stamps which Marieann bought during our earlier Ximending trip

The military police getting ready for their practice

At 12noon, we went separate ways. My mother took a different MRT line to the hosiptal while the girls and I took the Nangang line to Zhongxiao Fuxing MRT station. The girls wanted to see the Hello Kitty Cafe and to have lunch there. Unfortunately, when we got to the cafe, it was closed from late May 2013 to late June 2013 for renovation! :( There was a staff on site and she apologised to us and suggested we try the Barbie Cafe which is a few minutes' walk away. The girls were not interested in the Barbie Cafe so we left but vowed to return to the Hello Kitty Cafe on our next trip. :)

Hello Kitty Cafe closed for renovation!! We will be back! :)

A long stretch of mural at Zhingxiao Fuxing station depicting major attractions in Taipei. Can you recognise the attractions? There is Yuanshan Hotel in this section.

This section of the mural shows Taipei Fine Arts Museum

This sections shows Museum of Contemporary Art and Longshan Temple

This section shows Ximending's The Red House, Ximending, Taipei Main Station and Presidential Office

Taipei 101

Taipei MRT train

Songshan airport

Taipei Zoo and Maokong Gondola

We took the MRT back to Ximen station. We went to Daiso (all items NT$39 except for food stuff which is NT$49) and we spent an hour just browsing and deciding what to buy! It seems the some of the items being sold here are different from those in Singapore, and also with the price tag of NT$39 (it is about SGD$1.70 only), it is cheaper than in Singapore. I had to limit the number of things we could buy because of the weight limit for our luggage (20kg for 1 check-in luggage and 10kg for cabin luggage). I am worried about our luggage being over-weight! :P

A quick pop into The Red House for the girls to collect the stamps

Guide map of Ximending (it was useless to us as we had no sense of direction lol)

The goodies bought from Daiso :)

By the time we were done at Daiso, it was already 2:30pm. We were famished and headed straight into the first restaurant we saw. It's an Italian pasta restaurant called the Pasta Bar. We ordered set meals which ranged between NT$200 - NT210 which came with your choice of main pasta dish (add NT$40 for premium dishes), soup/ bread + drink. We sat at the full-length window on the second level. It was fun to have your meal while people watching from above. :)

The milk tea and corn+prawn soup from the set meal

Juliane with her set meal of garlic bread and chicken pasta in cream sauce

My pesto smoked duck pasta

Marieann's seafood pasta

After lunch, we shopped from 3:30pm to 5pm in Ximending. It was also drizzling lightly on and off. We bought some clothes, Marieann bought some earrings for herself and Juliane bought another hand-sewn owl souvenir for herself. We started to head back to our accommodation as we were pretty tired. But we were pretty happy that we got some shopping done. :)

Stopped at an arcade full of Claw cranes or grab machines. The girls wanted to try their luck. 

The girls didn't manage to grab anything lol. Only NT$20 spent/ wasted lol.

The girls thought they are "too cool for school" :P

One of the streets in Ximending

One of the popular meeting places in Ximending

Stopped by 7-11 store again to get snacks :)

On the left is the Military Police HQ, in the middle is the Presidential Office, on the right is Taipei Hero House

Front entrance of Taipei Armed Forces Hero House

Military Police HQ (can you see two guards posted at the entrance?)

Collected room key 640 and the breakfast vouchers for tomorrow

We were watching "Smile Again, Donghai" when my mother returned at 6:30pm. We ended up glued to the TV until the Korean drama ended at 8pm lol. :P Only then did we go look for dinner. As we were still not that hungry after our heavy pasta lunch (and the afternoon snacks), we bought food and drinks from the 7-11 store. :)

Sandwiches and pork rib bento

The pork rib bento came with pork rib, vegetable, sour vegetable, ham, and rice

After dinner, I packed our luggage because tomorrow morning, we have to check out at 11am and it would be too rushed to leave the packing till tomorrow. In terms of weight, I think our luggage just about made it within the weight limits. :)