Gauguin Expo, Taipei Story House and Flora Expo

Used to go to museums a lot when we were in Paris, but rarely after we came back to Taipei. Of course there was a lot more choice there in Paris, but also when you are an étranger, you always have much more intention to explore. I had a French girl friend who's been all over the world but never been to Versaille until she was 32.

Seems like they didn't get very many of Gauguin's works this time, it only took us about an hour and half to go through the whole thing in detail. In Paris, this kind of expo usually will take a couple days or more to roughly see everything, you need time to rest and take some refreshment every 1 or 2 hours in the nice gardens of the museums. But it was still a pretty interesting expo about Gauguin's life and works in Martinique and Tahiti.

It was about dinner time when we walked out of the gallery. There's a nice café with picture windows all around next to the nearby historical building "Taipei History House", although it was already dark, you can still see the colorful lights on the plants of the Flora Expo, so we decided to stay and have a simple supper.

Bread was not bad

Got a nice corner table

Corn skewer was sweet and juicy, pork belly (barbequed) tasted a bit like bacon and had a hint of smokey wood aroma, went well with the crunchy green salad.  

House wine by the glass: Fortant

Good value and smooth, NT$220 for 2

Also very good valued set menu.

Lunch set is about NT$450, soup or salad instead of soup and salad.

Soup of the day: pumpkin ginger, very good, not too watery.

Dan's main course:

Dijon mustard sauce chicken leg (roasted)

Pretty good indeed, much better than I expected.

Saved some, later fed it to some cats that we met near the MRT station.

Felt so bad because we were too full and those poor cats were so starving.

Dan had something scheduled later that night and we were in a hurry, otherwise we really wanted to go

get some more food for them.

My main couse:

Angel hair with truffle sauce

Didn't really have any truffle but good creamy sauce, OK for the price though.

Dessert:

Rose mousse with black berry

Light, with balanced sweet and sour flavor, I guess it was designed for  Valentine's Day,

which was the day before.

Paid a little more to replace our coffee with chrysanthemun Pu-Ur(普洱菊花茶)tea. 

Service was good and the ambiance was nice, too.

After dinner, we took a short walk around the Flora expo. We didn't have much time, so we just went around a small part of it.  There was a new bridge which linked several areas together so you don't have to cross the street with cars rushing by, and many theme gardens representing different countries as well.  Pretty good job indeed. Planning to come back during the day when the weather is nice. Although I enjoyed to walk around somewhere nice on a cold night like this with Dan, too.