In October, Shawn and I made a trip to Guangzhou, unaware that a global pandemic will start from one of their biggest wet markets in November, and now it has taken over the world - the economy plunging into the worst recession in nearly a century while diplomatic relations between countries are spiralling downwards.

Cafe Decor - 8/10

Food - 7.5/10

 One thing about pretty cafes I've always been skeptical is their food!

So far, there's been lots of hits and misses for the aesthetically gorgeous cafes I've been to.

The food at Cafe De Nicole's Flower looked really promising and reviews were pretty decent by Burpplers on the app, so we decided to order their recommended dishes - Truffle & Mushroom Ravioli and their signature fluffy original Pancakes, served with maple syrup.





As for the beverages, we didn't go with the reviewers' recommendations.
Some of them reviewed that the floral lattes were a little sweet, so we decided to skip the fancy drinks.

One bad coffee has the possibility to ruin our day (legit yes lol - coffee lovers can probably relate to this) so we opted for our usual coffee orders -- Flat White & Mocha.





Thankfully they didn't compromise on the aesthetic of the "normal" drinks.
Our coffee came with a dried flower and the milk was served in an old-school glass bottle. Cute!


Verdict
Cafe De Nicole is one of those (rare) cafes that managed to nail both interior aesthetic and food quality. Sure, the price factor may not be too appealing but don't let it warrant your first visit here!

For us, a one-time visit is probably enough. We loved our food, drinks and time here, we may or may not head back again since it's kinda out of the way.





Where to find:

ASPIRE PARK, QATAR

Featuring Wagyu Mushroom Melt and Wagyu Majestic Double, along with our sweet potato fries, onion rings and lemonade tea

The bread was soft, in a goo way because it was a great combination.

Next to Burgeri is Sugar and Spice, a dainty pretty fairytale-like decorated candy house cafe serving western food and desserts. D said we could go there for some desserts after our lunch. Highlight of the day! Heehee.

Ain't the cafe cute!

The interior is sooo pretty too!

Thankful for this man. He pampers me like a princess most of the time, feel so blessed to have him in my life.

There's two other cafes in Aspire Park as well, which we didn't have the chance to check out due to time constraint. However, Burgeri is definitely a must-try, along with Sugar and Spice! :)



We did a traditional photo shoot with the Qatari local costumes just a night back, and it's super cute!
Don't think we can pass them off as well as the locals do, but it was definitely a once in a lifetime experience.

Dear went for the Saudi Arabian style, which I stuck to the stylist's recommendation.

By the way, we did our shoot for QR80 (around SGD 30) at Mia Bazaar, just located right outside The Museum of Islamic Art :) It's a fortnightly weekend market that happens every once in a while, with many vendors selling food and handmade stuffs!








So much fun doing the shoot because we've never done such a photoshoot wearing traditional costumes before! People started gathering around us and taking photos! We were sweat profusely - not sure whether because we were abit nervous or the warm night. Hahaha.


Loving Doha so far :)

I'm so, so excited to be sharing this review right here on my blog today 'coz I've been recently following Huda Beauty on Instagram and I love this woman! A blogger turned entrepreneur, she s definitely super talented, and I love the looks she often shares on her Instagram!

Apparently, she has her own makeup line and uses them quite often in her makeup tutorial - and since I'm in the Middle East, why not grab some of her cosmetics from her makeup line?

Headed straight to Sephora at Villagio Mall and unfortunately, most of the items were not instock. Especially her eyeshadow palette - Rose Gold Edition, that seems to be out of stock EVERYWHERE here in Qatar.

I went to a few Sephora outlets in Qatar, but ALL of them do not have the eyeshadow palette in stock :'(

Instead, I was looking at her Lip Strobe series, and the colours were all so gorgeous! Reviews were pretty decent for this, but I was a little hesistant about the payoff of the colour, how it'd turn out on my lips, thus I  decided to grab one of her Lip Contour Set in Trendsetter & Bombshell to try out.




The Lip Contour Set consists of one Lip Liner and two Lip Strobes to create her signature, favourite look. Note that the lip strobes are miniature sizes, so it's great if you're looking to just give it a try!


I love the packaging of her lip strobes though. It feels very classy and is easy to open.
Her Lip Contour Pencil is easy pretty much any other lip pencils, but the colour is super beautiful.

Our trek at Taroko National Park, Hualien was really pretty. Though it was kinda short, we enjoyed ourselves immensely and are already planning to go back to Taiwan to explore the other treks! Didn't know that Taiwan has so many pretty treks as well.

The first thing that we did - was to purchase their SIM card. As we had booked our accommodation in Hualien and needed to communicate with our host, it was necessary to have a number that was contactable and had internet connection. There'll be phone stalls just right outside the airport - we bought from 台湾大哥大, apparently it seemed like to be one of the more popular telecom services over there. 


The transport system is much more systematic and straight forward. We bought our bus tickets from the airport (go straight to Kuo Kuang “國光客運“ booth and buy tickets - Bus 1819) to the Taipei Main station for less than SGD$6 (NT125) to continue our journey to Hualien. It was about an hour's ride from the airport to the Main Station.






Just a heads up, the bus does not directly drop you off at the Taipei Main Station. Instead, it dropped us outside the mall that's linked directly to the Main Station, and it took us another 10-15 minutes to walk over to the Main Station.

Along the way, there was so many things to do and see over there!



One thing that we didn't do was to purchase tickets in advance. When we reached the train station, we were told that the direct tickets to Hualien was SOLD OUT on that day. Luckily we had Plan B - which was to purchase the combination tickets from Kamalan.

How the combination ticket works:
--> An hour's bus ride from Taipei Main Station to Luodong Station
--> From Luodong Station to Xincheng Station (新城車站) via train

And it all costed us only NT209! (as compared to the express direct train ride which would have costed us about NT405) That's literally half the price off!


While waiting for the bus, we bought some small snacks from the convenience stalls and we spotted my favourite fishballs!! Wheee~

While waiting for our train to arrive

Luodong Station 羅東車站 - En route to Xincheng Station~!

And we thought that the trains are really cute.. So traditional

And they have these train masters as well..

While on the train, we received a message from the government saying that there was a small earthquake in Hualien. I was SOOO scared when the china passengers around us also started panicking. Lol.



Is this how we're gonna die..? Am I gonna die before I even turn 23? In a foreign land?



Okay so we were all super cautious and were observing the area but nothing really happened...

Finally, we reached 新城車站 Xincheng Station!

Arrival at Hualien

Rihang, our host was already there waiting for our arrival. Informed him beforehand that we'd be arriving about late evening, thankfully he was there early :)

The accommodation we picked was Taroko Lodge, as recommended by Google & Tripadvisor. Had a high rating plus they organise trips to the national park, so decided to give it a try.

As it was already pretty late, Rihang's son brought us to their family restaurant to have dinner. It was a pretty simple fare, but the food was really yummy though! We made some new friends from Australia and France as well. (And we were the only Asians..)

Trekking at Jhuilu Old Trail, Taroko National Park

The next morning, I got up pretty early to snap some photos of our pretty little lodge.


Morning light

Took this photo and she was like, "Ah nooo! I don't have my makeup on.."

Before the trek, we did a quick stop at the nearby convenience store and bought some drinks + snacks to fuel us up during the trek!





The trail that we took up (Jhuilu Old Trail) was said to be one of the toughest in Taroko National Park. We had to sign up for the permit to trek in advance as a limited number of people are allowed each day due to the difficulty level.

We were really lucky to be at Taroko with that lovely weather because it was the LAST DAY that we were able to trek that week, given the weather forecast that the entire Taiwan will be affected by one of the largest typhoons of the year the next day. *lucky us!*



Note that we started from the Swallow Cave, as the other route has actually been closed down due to landslide from the previous typhoon. :/

Our starting point - All happy to start our trek!

Beware of the unknown.. Definitely trekking has its inherent dangers, but the views pay off at the summit/finish point, right?

Becoz you're part of me.

At the very last part of the trek... Close to the edge

And the only way is up~

Both of them kept getting get stung by bees at the last part, which was really scary coz we were so close to the edge!

We reached the last part of the trek, rested at the pitstop and had some snacks before we headed back out again - and yes, it's via the same route.

The last part of the trek was beautiful, reminded me of Yunnan when we spend most of our days in the car, going through gorgeous gorges and valleys :') Nature is so beautiful!

Our guide told us that he was kinda impressed by us - we were one of the fastest trekkers since usually most of his guests will take a longer time to trek in and out. I guess we're one of the seasoned ones ;P

We then explored Swallow Caves (which was bloody touristy) since we had some free time.



Nothing much to shout out again, no swallow spotted but lots of China nationals with selfie sticks. *rolls eyes*

Rihang was nice enough to bring us to the other parks to trek.





We spotted a lot of big spiders, and D kept on throwing stones at them. Fortunately, these spiders' webs are really strong so it didn't fall hahaha.
We also managed to cover 3 different places in one day.. Difficulty level for Taroko National Park in general is pretty easy. Darren and I didn't feel that it was very hard, as compared to our trek in China!! Views were just so-so, though I did enjoyed myself in the last part of the Jhuilu Old Trail :)

To head back, we trekked out and waited at the Visitors' Centre while waiting for Rihang to pick us up and send us back :)

Night out at Zhiqiang Night Market

After an exhausting day out at the national park, we took a quick nap and proceeded to the night market after! Rihang drove us to the Xincheng Train Station, which we took a quick 4 mins ride down to the city of Hualien.

So much buzz going around there, as compared to Xincheng! However, I was pretty glad that we were staying in Xincheng as it was exactly what we needed - a break away from the city life.

D decided to bring SGD $40 to spend for that night.. (mainly on food and cab)

This is not your ordinary hotdog bun....

Ta-daa! Filled with noodles :) It was surprisingly quite good, but D didn't like it.

Hugeass seafood. This was one of the prettiest stalls among all the other stalls, but also one of the most expensive. The wait was soooo long!

 

Lots of innovative food stalls!

Everytime I'm with you... I'm in paradise.

 We were so tired by then, and luckily we still had some money back to take cab to the train station.

Heading back to Taipei

They also warned us of the incoming typhoon, which we were quite worried about.
Our french friend wanted to head to the neighbouring island for his next pitstop - despite the typhoon! Not sure if he's......... alive. 😓






We took the train from Xincheng back to Taipei, it was about a 2 hours journey :)



Really loving the train stations in Taiwan.. They all have this rustic charm, reminds me of Japan so much!

Our Hotel, City Inn Plus Hotel 

 We headed out to walk around Ximending, one of the most happening place in Taipei!







Took the chance to walk around Xi Men Ding shopping district. So many shops that we were going dizzy! Not exactly a fan of expensive places......

Exploring some random mall. Their sportswear are so expensive leh!

Later that, we met up with D's friend who suggested to meet at AlleyCat's, supposedly one of their popular Italian restaurant in Taipei.

Yummy pizza! Anything's amazing with cheese. Heh heh.

A hidden gem indeed :)

I was craving for bubble tea, so Ted suggested that we buy 50 - something (Haha, I don't know how to pronounce) and..............




The milk tea was so, so so good!

Now I know why Taiwan is the king of Bubble Teas.
Eh.. Singapore please import this in leh!

We then bid goodbye to Ted & headed to the train station to Raohe Night Market!
Whee, I super duper love night markets - especially if  it means yummy street food and great finds. Raohe Night Market is much less touristy as compared to Shilin, and I heard that the quality of the food is much better there as well.





We were greeted with the aroma of the yummy street foods and colourful stalls along the street. Such a glorious sight!

Felt like eating everything that were in our way, but after learning our lesson at Zhiqiang Night Martket @ Hualien, we decided to save our stomach for the ones worth the calories.

The problem was... how do we know which are the good ones?


The first stall that we went to had a pretty unique concept - they were baking their buns in a traditional way. So cute!






There were quite a few flavours to choose from, we chose the one that was rose salted.

And we did not regret it at all.

I was kinda skeptical about it, kept asking D to stop buying so much food lest we can't finish again, but he was persistent on this. I attributed it to his love for meat, but I'm glad he persisted.

He fed me a mouthful and I was like........... "WOAH. Why you buy so little?!"

Hahahha. My poor darling.





It was raining quite heavily due to the incoming typhoon, so the shops started packing up.. There wasn't much to see so here're some interesting finds we found along the way:

Colourful gradiant drink. Supposedly it's 100% natural. The english name.. Lol.

Such a pretty one!

Walked into some "supposedly famous" beef noodle soup shop, tried their signature and was like.. Meh. But we needed something to warm our stomach that cold night!

Glorious bowl of Mee Sua 😍 Added with lots of garlic and vinegar!

We had a love-hate relationship with the typhoon - because of the typhoon, the queue was almost non-existent! :P

Next up, we walked around (while struggling to stay alive) the dead streets of Ximending, hoping to find shops that were opened - and ta-daaa! Yong He Soya Beancurd Shop.


Honestly, this wasn't part of our itinerary at all - but it was swamped with people. Queues were forming outside despite the strong wind, so we decided to join in as well.

It was about a 15 minutes queue before we managed to get a seat in the cramped shop.

Really cramped...

We ordered a floss pancake - and it was soooo good! D really liked it a lot, and so do I 😋

Getting really comfortable in our seats now... Don't want to walk in the rain 😥

This was really good too!! Omelette pancake, but i still preferred the chicken floss 😊

With my lover 😚 One of my favourite shots that we've ever taken together so far!

Anyway, D is well-known for his habit of over ordering and overeating everytime, (have a feeling he'll kill me if he sees this 🤣) so after our brunch, we had our lunch after at a cute little Japanese restaurant.

It was really cute! We got so fascinated by the decor so we decided to go in (without checking the reviews, damnit) and give it a try.

Delivered by train!

Feels like Japan too :)

D said that we've to definitely try out their sushi here, since Taiwan is really near Japan - and that their source of seafood is about the same.

So..............

Sashimi

Unagi - My first love. And it was REALLY good.

As much as we enjoyed our experience in the little cozy Japanese restaurant, we didn't fancy the prices of these dishes though. Our bill came up to $80 - $90, and it wasn't that much food too :/

The food wasn't as phenomenal as we'd thought it'd be, could have saved our stomach for somewhere else better too. Nevertheless, they had some nice dishes and it was definitely a great experience 😊

Thanks my love!

The rain got a little heavy by then, so we went back to Jin Feng and tabao our favourite braised pork rice, some cakes from a nearby bakery and headed back to the hotel to eat!

Wind was so strong that some pedestrians had to cling onto the telephone booth for their dear life. We, on the other hand almost got blown away. Hahaha. Many branches fell and were all over the road too.. So thankful we got back safely.

Chilling at the main area while enjoying our favourite food!

On the day that we were leaving, we went to Ximending for the last time (fml, been going to XMD for 3 days straight 🙄) because I wanted to eat my Ah Chung mee sua!!!


This time, decided to go large and D was like, "Are you sure?" I persisted and he gave in. Hehe.

We're gonna miss you, Taiwan!

And yep, you can prolly see the aftermath of the typhoon in the photo.. Guess the locals are not ready to step out of their house yet 😂

Really enjoyed ourselves in Taiwan 😊

Lots of precious memories, despite the typhoon - we still had a great time there. This trip also marked the beginning of a new journey between D and I, which I never thought we'd ever be.

The people are pretty friendly, and they're all so nice. If anyone's thinking of Taiwan as their next holiday destination, do yourself a favour - book it as soon as you can! 🤗