What are you going to do when you have 4 days holiday? Instead of doing nothing, we decided to go on a trip to Hualien city, Taiwan to soak up nature. Hualien city has the most natural, unspoiled environment and a very slow pace. We arrived in Hualien by train from Yilan ( some things came up so we took uber from Taipei to Yilan ) and it took us around one hour.
After checked-in at Shan Shui Hotel which is nearby to the train station, the adventures begin! Public transportation in Hualien is very inconvenient as they don't have an MRT system and take a taxi to travel around will be quite costly. So we decided to hire a private driver aka tour guide to bring us all-around the second day and I guess it's the best choice ever.
Here are some places we went and photolog of our trip:
Moli Cafe 小巷茉莉
I went here all the way for their souffle pancake, but too bad we didn't make any reservations and it's fully booked. So we went to a cafe nearby to have some coffee before we heading to the night market.
Address: 花蓮市三民街62號
Business hour: Tues - Sun 12PM - 8:30PM / closed on Mon
E-zuo Cafe 伊坐咖啡
It's a waffle party!
Address: 花蓮市三民街35-1號
Business hour: Mon - Fri 9:30AM - 6PM / Sat - Sun 9AM - 6PM
Dongdamen Night Market 東大門夜市
We ate a lot... like really a lot but I just took some pics of them. My most favourite food goes to 燒麻糬冰！as shown as the photo at the right.
Address: 花蓮市中山路50號
Business hour: Mon - Sun 5:30PM - 11:30PM
Four-eight Highland 四八高地
This was the first stop on the second day. From this height, we were able to see the whole view of Qixingtan beach. And... I've reached a level of clumsiness which I totally forgot to bring any pairs of pants/shorts for the trip ( LOL ) !
Qixingtan Beach 七星潭
It's really beautiful even though the weather was gloomy.
Swallow Grotto 燕子口 & Qingshui Cliff 清水斷崖
Honestly you have to travel here by yourself to believe these places are not photoshopped.
周家蒸餃小籠包
We finally have our lunch here at a very famous local food store. It's quite crowded and we queued up for about 20 minutes, that's still fine, good things take time!
Address: 花蓮縣花蓮市公正街4-20號
Business hour: Mon - Sun open 24 hours
貨櫃星巴克
Yes, it's a very special Starbucks at Hualien until it has become a tourist place. It's Instagram perfect but the fact was it's too crowded to take photos. We couldn't even find a table and the queue was craaaazzzy.
Address: 花蓮縣吉安鄉南濱路一段505號
Business hour: Sun - Thurs 9AM - 9PM / Fri - Sat 9AM - 10PM
Komod'z 谷慕滋
Komod'z is a bistro owned by an aboriginal Taiwanese rock musician——張震嶽，they have the most friendly waiter/waitress here to explain every single dish to us. Also they have ntd380 minimum spend, anyway we had a great dinner here.
Address: 花蓮市博愛街 108 號
Business hour: Mon - Sun 6PM - 1AM
Anna Coffee 安娜咖啡
This was the last stop of our trip. We decided to have some coffee and brunch before we left Hualien at Anna Coffee. Thumbs up for their french toast!
Address: 花蓮市國聯 5 路 137 號
Business hour: Mon - Sun 12PM - 11PM / closed on Thurs