Call me old fashioned but one of the things I always look forward to whenever I get to stay in lovely hotels is their breakfast offering.
Doesn't matter if they have a lot of variety or if they have everything prettily laid out.
Doesn't matter too if they have more local than imported or if they have three different kinds of yogurt or eight kinds of cereal.
I love their breakfast just so long as they do it with heart, and do it well.
There's nothing to be shortchanged from the offerings of this Far Eastern property in Taipei, and breakfast saw me having my first bowl of Taiwanese porridge with pork floss, some sweetened bits of bean curd skin, and a humongous youtiao which the Chinese me of course couldn't resist.
There was, of course, an omelet- with the works, a hash brown, some fried udon (I like chewy noodles), two little waffles that I had with butter because they looked too good to resist, and slices of watermelon dipped with plum powder because, oy, Taiwan.
It was to Taipei Main Station for the 1131 HSR Train to Kaohsiung that we went to right after that, and can I say that to be safe it's best to get to the station about an hour before time because not only do you have to go get your pre-booked tickets from the counters, you have to find the right platform, wait near the platform, and make sure you get onto the correct train that leaves right on the dot, right on time.
I'm glad we got there early.
I'm also glad I got to see how the famous train bento boxes work and even though I didn't get one because I was already so full, I might, at another time, buy one just for the experience, and for the ride.
Effectiveness and efficiency make for a very comfortable ride and after a couple of stops including Banqiao and Taichung, the train pulled into Kaohsiung's Zuoying Station (also) right on the dot at 1305.
Upon exit, a hotel shuttle was waiting for us- the staff stood outside the Starbucks waving a placard- and we reached H20 Hotel on Minghua Road in Gushan District pretty quickly but since the room wasn't as yet ready, we headed out for lunch at a diner nearby.
I can't remember exactly how the menu worked, but I know one of us took steak. One of us took a chicken chop, and the meal came with free-flow soup, free-flow vegetables and free-flow drinks. If I'm not wrong the soup might have been minestrone, but I know I took plenty of vegetables and drinks-wise, I know I took a sweetened iced tea.
Later in the afternoon we checked in and settled down.
H20 Hotel is a hotel that I'd say to be more suited for youth, millennials, or xennial business travelers than for families with elderly or young children. Not because the ambience isn't suited for them or for young children but far from the stoic (that elderly tend to prefer) or the bright (that children generally prefer) there is some sort of a functional, yet quirky, colorful charm about the space that shows you the structured as much as it splashes you with hints of its cheer amidst the canvas of nudes, darks and browns.
The space is well utilized, by the way.
In the alcove (which might well have been a balcony were it not for the typhoon winds), there was a work desk, a huge sink-in square-shaped armchair with cushions strategically placed on all sides, and a coffee table large enough for a bento box meal plus drinks and snacks.
The bathroom wasn't bad either.
There was a bath tub (which I didn't get to use), and a separate toilet and shower area, with toiletries from luxury brand Bvlgari.
The rest of the day we spent meeting a loved one who happened to be in Kaohsiung this particular season and whom I was especially eager to meet.
It's one thing to meet someone for the second time after 6 long years.
It's another thing altogether to meet someone and catch up with them as if the intervening years had never happened and you just take off from there.
Loved one and I happily belong to the latter.
And yes, we do have shared memories and shared experiences and some new ones which we don't actually expect to remember, but we do.
This afternoon she had offered to tour me around the city a bit, so after a lovely exchange of hugs and gifts, into her car we hopped and off it was to Kaohsiung Main Station for a visit of several anime shops that she thought would be of interest to us.
And yes!
They were.
We hung around there a bit, got a couple of keychains, got a couple of stickers- including that of Mikan- the feline station master of Taiwan's metro. Then because there was still time we looked at manga series of various kinds some more, then went off to dinner.
There had been plans to visit the Ruifeng Night Market near our hotel, but to our surprise it was closed when we drove past (maybe because of the rain), so we headed to Hanshin Arena Mall instead where on the 5th floor she brought us to a fun sushi place called KURA that she frequented.
I'm familiar with the train-style of service at Japanese sushi places where your food is brought to you not by people nor by robots but by little choo-choo trains on a conveyor belt.
What I haven't seen before, however, is a combination of train-style and coin-ball-machine game style where, instead of dropping a coin to get a ball, what happens is that every time you return 5 plates, you get to play a little game and then you get a ball with a mystery gift inside.
I was told that one ends up eating a lot of sushi when one's trying to build a collection.
It was a lovely time we had over dinner eating our favorite foods.
There was a plate of edamame, there was chawanmushi to go around all four of us, some of us had our regular slices of salmon and salmon aburi, and then there were salmon sashimi as well as salmon belly sashimi to go around. For dessert we took soft serve with cornflakes that I thought served as a good end to the meal and to our day.
Except that our day wasn't over yet.
Back at the hotel just before I went up, I was gifted a most pleasant and precious surprise in the form of a Mikan Stuffie by the Young Loved one who had asked his mother to buy it so that I had something to "remember Kaohsiung by".
Would you believe me if I told you I literally danced with excitement and delight when I opened the bag and saw the Mikan Stuffie looking up at me?
It touched my heart so much, I tell you.
Never had I expected that I would own a Stuffie as a souvenir of the city.
Never too had I expected that I would be gifted one.
Mikan now sits in her designated space on the side of a shelf where she catches my eye every time I look up from my desk.
And I smile.
She makes me think of the Kaohsiung Main Station.
She makes me think of the car in which we all sat in.
She makes me think of how we ended that first evening in Kaohsiung, where after my loved ones went back (there was school tomorrow for the Young), we walked to a 24hour Carrefour down the street and, along with coffee, bought bags of sweet potato chips that were of a great price and which were way more expensive back home.
