Eclectic Trips

The bar at Luxie

The first time i went out to a club in Taipei, the thought that kept popping in my head was that the scene looked like it was straight from some cool Asian action flick. The people are excited to be here, the music is good, the strobe lights are flicking. My lovely Taiwanese friend James took us out on an excursion around Taipei clubs, and what an adventure it was! The first club we went to had an endless maze of small and large rooms, that we walked through pretty fast, with James saying hello and “high fiving” tons of people on the way  (totally felt like a scene from a movie). Then we moved on to “Luxie”- the hottest and largest club, which also had tons of various rooms, playing different music genres- house and hip hop being the two main sounds. The crowd here varied, much like the music and different rooms’ environments. Lots of super hip, gorgeous Taiwanese girls, boys of all ages and styles, businessmen, Western models, expats- you name it. Everyone seemed to be having a blast- huge smiles on people’s faces, mostly everyone dancing, some with glow-sticks. I especially loved the design of the club- very modern, posh couches, red being the predominant color. The bars in different rooms are all designed differently, pretty over the top and definitely beautiful. Luxie also serves some of the best exotic specialty cocktails, that come in all kids of funky glass wear. We danced and explored Luxie all night, and I really had a blast. So when the following week James invited us on his “Club Tour’ again, I very gladly agreed, and tagged along for the more familiar, but still very exciting and fun ride.

James and friends at Luxie

KTV- Taiwanese Karaoke is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before. After reserving a  room for a large  group of us, I arrived to meet our friends at what looked like a giant Palace or luxury 5 star hotel. I double checked the address to make sure I was in the right place- it looked way too fabulous to be the Karaoke bar. Apparently, in Taiwan Karaoke is very serious business- and is not done in a bar, but instead in a very posh Imperial palace  type place. Our private room was huge, with couches, table, movie theater size screen and all the Karaoke equipment imaginable. What a fun time  to sing karaoke with a lot of friends and have a private spacious room to do it in. Of course all kinds of drinks and food is available here, and the waitress made sure to tell us that f for some reason they don’t have something that we want they will go out and get it for us. Now that’s what I call service

KTV fun

If you are ever in Taipei, I highly recommend a visit to a few of Taipei’s nightclubs and KTV- it really is a lot of fun.

Crimea landscape

Crimea is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been to. It’s truly magnificent with it’s landscapes, mountains and beaches. When you drive through Crimea, every corner you turn opens up a view even more spectacular than the last, and the drive up and down Crimea’s winding roads is a real pleasure.

The first place I stayed at was called Utyos- or Santa Barbara. The beaches here are not the beautiful sandy luxury, but the water is crystal clear, and relatively cool on most days. Instead of the sand, you get either large pebbles, or just concrete platforms with lounge chairs for rent. The weather was perfect throughout my stay, and I grew to enjoyed the pebbles, and diving into the clear cool water from the concrete platforms. Above Santa Barbara there is a beautiful vast park,  with an old castle- an old residence of Princess Gagarin. There is some gorgeous scenery from the mountains, and really nice, lush vegetation all around the large park.

There are small fruit stands  everywhere that sell the freshest, sweetest, juiciest fruit that is locally grown. The figs alone are worth a visit to Crimea. Another local specialty that i really enjoyed was the “LIVE” beer- a microbrew that has no additives or preservatives, it’s the best beer I ever tasted. The promenade is lined with cafes and restaurants that have very extensive, if similar menus. I loved the food here. Lots of yummy seafood, fresh veggies, great salads. “Muscles a la Crimea”- local specialty, was my favorite-muscles taken out of the shell and sauteed with onions- yum! For all the deliciousness, the food is very inexpensive. About $5-7 for breakfast, $10 for lunch, and $15 and up dinner.  As was my (simple and a bit outdated, but very clean and comfy) hotel “The quiet harbor”- around $45 a night. With all of this affordable loveliness, I kept asking myself- Why aren’t there more international tourists here? And I am pretty sure it’s the language barrier. Virtually no one speaks English here, and since there is no international tourism, it doesn’t seem like the locals have any incentive to learn.

Crystal clear water in Utyos

fruit..and fish?

"Live" beer stand

Another really beautiful corner of Crimea is Balaklava. A town famous for it’s Nuclear Submarine base.

****The base was said to be virtually indestructible and designed to survive a direct atomic impact. During that period, Balaklava was one of the most secret residential areas in the Soviet Union. Almost the entire population of Balaklava at one time worked at the base; even family members could not visit the town of Balaklava without a good reason and proper identification. In 1996, the last Russian submarine left the base, which is now open to the public for guided tours around the canal system, the base, and a small museum, which is now housed in the old ammunition warehouse deep inside the hillside.****( Wikipedia)

And that’s all cool, and the museum is definitely worth a visit. But Balaklava also has a huge beautiful marina that houses some incredible yachts. There are some great restaurants here as well. And then, there is a small marina that has dingy little boats that you hire to take you to completely remote tiny beaches only accessible by a small boat. You take a enough food and water for the day, and get dropped off at one of these raw beauties, and the boat comes to pick you up at the end of the day. If you are lucky you will see dolphins playing and jumping on the way to these tiny treasures. This is by far the best experience ever.

Balaklava at night

With all the beauty of Crimea, it comes as a surprise to me that Yalta is considered the capital of Crimea, and thus is the place visitors want to visit most. Yalta is very crowded, pretty overpriced, the beaches are packed, and thus pretty dirty. As far as I noticed doesn’t offer anything that is any more special than any of the other small, quaint and lovely towns all around Crimea. But then again, I always prefer smaller places with character to large tourist destinations, so maybe I overlooked something special about Yalta. It is definitely worth a visit though if you are around. The walk on a long promenade along the sea is nice, with some small parks and green squares along the way. At the end of the promenade, there is lovely artisan market with artists and crafts people selling their art and trinkets- some really nice stuff here. And the restaurants along the promenade are decent-they just seemed so overpriced to me compared to everywhere else in Crimea.

"Zolotoye Runo" restaurant on the promenada in Yalta

Yalta promenade

Perhaps it’s worth learning some basic Russian, to be able to come and experience Crimea with all of it’s incredible undiscovered beauty.

Crimea is what they call the “Ukrainian Rivera”  spread out along the coast of the Black Sea. It’s a place of amazing beauty, and each little town offers it’s own special “something”. When I arrived here, my first thought was that it feels like time stood still here for the past 20 years. It was apparent in everything- from fashion, to the way people interact, to the buses from the Socialist Russia era, to the ubiquitous sunflower seeds that Ukrainians are obsessed with shelling and eating everywhere. It all brought on bouts of nostalgia and a sort of joy that some things really DON’T change. I left Ukraine when I was 14 years old, so I am sure there are some things I don’t remember so well, but with my new found American and World traveling perspective there were some things in Crimea that I found outright odd.

1. They give you change in candy.

The first time it happened I thought it was a fluke, a creative cashier with imaginative methods of change disbursement. I found it utterly adorable, but later realized that somehow this is a common thing. The Ukrainian currency  is  “Hrivna”. One US dollar= 8 Hryvna-about 12 cents. But the currency wasn’t always this low, and some of the prices are still Hrivnas and Kopeikas (cents). So if a purchase requires for the cashier to give you change that includes kopeikas, and they don’t happen to have any kopeikas, they give you one or two or five hard candies that are always in jars by the cash register. I never ended up figuring out exactly how much one hard candy is worth, as the “change” always varied. They don’t ask you if it’s OK to give you change in candy, nor do they make any apologies for it, just kinda of matter of fact- here is some candy for you. I even got lollipops a few times. So do make sure all your cavities are filled before you travel to Ukraine, as you will be getting tons of hard candy:)

Crimea- View from above

2. The last page of the menu is the price list for what it’s going to cost you if you break anything.

Now this is really special. Once again the first time I saw this in a pretty upscale waterfront restaurant I thought it was hilarious, and in my head thanked whoever was responsible for providing my humorous moment for the day. Of course the next realization was that EVERY SINGLE restaurant had this particular gem of a read as the last page of the menu. Apparently it’s a common thing for people to dine, have way tooo much to drink and stat breaking things. So common in fact, that Crimea restaurants were forced to take necessary precautions for situations like these. The first restaurant, whose price list I found so amusing had plates, and ashtrays and glassware listed. The next establishment I visited had all of the above, plus prices for tables, chairs, musical equipment (they had a small stage with a band playing nightly). And one restaurant had the price one would have to pay if they destroyed the restaurant in it’s entirety. Destroying an entire restaurant sounds like no small feat, and I am not quite sure how that is achievable, but I guess they had their reasons for concern.

Last page of the menu that says " the prices of items in case you break them"

3. They sell EVERYTHING on the beach

Selling things on the beach in beach towns is a very common thing of course. And as we know the items being sold vary greatly by country and region. In Crimea the things sold on the beach are Ice Cream, Corn on the Cob,  and sliced watermelon, which are huge hits- those are the top 3 consumed items on all of Crimea’s beaches. The ladies on the beach also sell homemade pastries and “pirozhki” -knish like dough things stuffed with meat, or potatoes or cherries. Then there are sunglasses and hats and floating devices. So far so good, right? So you will hear several different people walking around the beach at any given time loudly advertising their respective goodies-

“pirozhki, pirozhki, get your fresh home made pirozhki here, I have cherry, potato, and meat. Get your pirozhki before they run out, only a few left!”

But in addition to the expected beach gooodies, there is plenty of unexpected and sometimes a bit shocking. They sell toilet paper, calling cards, soap, move tickets…and (gasp) condoms!  Why anyone would need these particular items on the beach is a bit beyond me, but it’s nice to know they are available

The VERY packed beach at Gurzuf

4. They disobey the rules and reprimand you for doing so at the same time.

I was staying at a very quaint place called “Santa Barbara” and once took the bus to Yalta. It’s about an hour away, and the roads here are truly scary, so every passenger must have a seat. That’s the rule. The rickets for this bus ride are purchased at the bus station and cost  about 2-3 dollars. It’s a very steep and winding road up the mountain to get from Santa Barbara to the main highway, and there are a bunch of little villages and a few resorts on the way up. There are always hitchhikers on the side of the road, and the bus driver would stop, pick them up and literally yell at them along these lines “You are not supposed to be hitchhiking here! This is dangerous! I can get in a lot of trouble for picking you up!”. Yet he stopped at least 5 times on the way to the highway, and of course charged the hitchhikers a small fee that he put in his pocket.

I took the bus to the train station some days later, with young female driver, and she did THE SAME exact thing. Almost word for word with the ” this is against the rules, and i could lose my job for stopping”

Why stop then I ask? And if you do stop, don’t yell at the poor hitchhikers- it’s a bit of a double standard.

Crimea's winding roads

5. It looks like they have been producing the same exact bathing suit for the past 20 years. And ALL men wear speedos

The fashion here is outright funny. It is so outdated that it’s hard to believe. Any of the older women  on the  beach could easily be cast as an extra in a 70′s Era movie. The hairstyles play  it up even more. And virtually all men wear tiny speedos. It doesn’t matter if they are overweight, young, or old. Those tiny shorts dominate the beaches here, and look even funnier in contrast with some of the women’s very large bathing suits.

When my husband and i first moved to Miami our absolute favorite thing to do was to go to Lincoln Road, South Beach’s beautiful pedestrian mall on Sundays. Sundays are the Farmer’s Market, and every other week during the Winter, there is a great antique market. Interestingly enough, six years later, it’s still one of my favorite Sunday activities- brunch and a long stroll on Lincoln. Lincoln road is about 14 blocks in length, has a nice variety of stores, restaurants, cafes, gelato places, and great people watching. Since we moved to Miami 6 years ago, Lincoln has changed somewhat, but not significantly. Most of the shops and restaurants that were here then, are still here, of course some have gone out of business, and were replaced by different successors, but largely the layout and the feel of Lincoln remains unchanged. The last block of Lincoln Road, between Lenox and Alton avenue has undergone massive renovations over the past year, and has turned into a very  posh block with high end retailers like Y-3 and  the ever-so-chic Taschen.  It’s very pretty and polished, but fits well with the rest of Lincoln Road- just feels more fresh.  On Sunday you will see lots of people walking their dogs, families with strollers, pretty girls walking by and cute guys skating around. If you are lucky, you might see “Clucky the rooster”- a Miami icon, this white rooster rides on the front of the wheel of a bicycle of a guy wearing overalls. Quite the dynamic duo those two. Lincoln road is as popular with locals as it is with Miami visitors, and for that reason you need to be a discerning consumer, and try to eat at places that don’t pass out flyers as you walk by. Some noteworthy places are  Doraku Sushi - very cozy and cute, though sometimes a bit loud, with innovative sushi and wasabi bloody marys are just awesome. Quattro- very chic Italian eatery, gorgeously designed and perfectly delicious, a lot of ingredients being flown directly from Italy. The service is great, the crowd is either rich or gorgeous, or both- this is definitely the “see and be seen” type of establishment. One of our personal favorites- “Books & Books”-a great outdoor casual restaurant that grew out of a tiny 3 table cofee place in a book store. At some point they added about 10 tables outside, and a small menu, and now it’s a full-fledged delicious restaurant with tons of seating, usually pretty packed- especially the weekends in season. They have many great vegan specials, use organic and local ingredients whenever possible, and everything here is oh-so-fresh.

After our lovely traditional Sunday brunch at “Books” a leisurely stroll and farmer’s market buys. The farmer’s market is nothing too special- there are a few stands here and there, and only a few vendors with fruit and flowers. My two favorite ones are the fruit guy and the flower guy right on the corner of Meridian. Can’t beat the prices from both these vendors, and if you go later in the day- around five, the prices get slashed even further. The fruit and veggies are fresh, some organic, and there are some exotic fruits like passion fruit or guava, that smell amazing! The flower guy has some really nice selection of flowers, always different, he is knowledgeable about his flowers, and the flowers usually last a while.

If you are ever in Miami on a Sunday, Lincoln road is definitely the place to check out.

Flower vendor on Lincoln Road

Farmer's market

Wynwood Walls art

On the second Saturday of every month, is the famous Wynwood Art walk. Most galleries have opening receptions, special events and serve wine and beer. Sometimes there are bands playing outside, and light installations are exhibited on the streets. The crowds that fill the streets are  eclectic, mostly younger generation, though you see older people here and there. Lots of students and ubiquitous hipsters, artsy folk of all sorts, and those just here for the free booze.

Outside of Joey's restaurantLight installationLight installation

Wynwood is Miami’s up and coming art neighborhood. Though it looks pretty desolate during the day, there are dozens of art galleries spread throughout the district. It’s best to print up a map online, and strategize your gallery visits during the regular gallery hours, though during the art walk I prefer to just follow the crowds. Galleries are many and very eclectic, specializing  mostly in contemporary art. The exhibitions change often, so I won’t discuss what is presented in any particular gallery, you best follow your instinct here. The distric is filled with large scale graffitied walls and murals, that are pretty awesome. They are called wynwood walls and are located all over Wynwood. Walking from gallery to gallery and stopping over to listen to some music on the street, or party like backyard scenarios that are present in some galleries  is a very fun way to pass the evening. Go early – around 7,  and stay awhile discovering this homegrown fun night that keeps evolving.

Street art

Live music on the street

Of course after all the art and the wine one ought to get hungry, and Wynwood has some fantastic dining options. Joey’s, my personal favorite is a  lovely, authentic, inexpensive Italian with a wood burning oven and great pizza. They always have tons of great specials, and offer half orders of their yummy pastas. The wine list is comprised of a lot of excellent budget choices, plenty of options by the glass here as well. Joey’s gets packed during the art walk, so reservation is a must. But even with your reservation prepare to wait up to an hour. If you can snag a seat by the tiny bar, order a pizza and some wine while you wait.

Cafeina is a newcomer to Wynwood, it’s an art gallery slash tapas bar slash lounge. The space is really nicely done, with a chill vibe and nice music. Tehir garden is great as well, as are the fancy signature cocktails a lot of which are made with coffee ( you get the whole C reference I am sure)

Art in Wynwood

Bardot is the last stop on the list. After the art and the food you need the drinks. That’s just how it goes- so make a night of it. Bardot is a pretty magical place- a bar, lounge, live music venue with rotating art and painfully posh decor. Keeping up with the whole speakeasy vibe the entrance to the venue is in the very well lit, but nonetheless back alley. Rock rules here, as do eclectic electroselections an really good oldies. The decor is comprised of chic velvet couches, incerdibly well curated vintage gems, complete with vases, books, gorgeous ashtrays and all kinds of eye candy. The crowd is painfully hip, young, drunk, dancing and totally feelin it here. Love Bardot- my favorite bar in all of Miami.

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very cool candy at the night market

Taipei is a place full of smells. Sometimes I walk down the street in a new city and I catch a whiff of something that instantly reminds me of Taipei. There are so many smells- sweet and pungent, street food being prepared, and some completely unknown smells that while I lived in Taipei for 4 months I still was unable to properly identify. The one smell that is utterly unmistakable is that of Smelly tofu. I thought Smelly tofu is a purely Taiwanese phenomenon, but recently found out that it’s also served in China and Hong Kong. It’s tofu that’s been soaked in fermented brine for anywhere from a couple of days to months. When it is cooked up by street vendors, it smells so repulsive and inedible, that the scent permeates the air for several blocks around. How this particular item of food can possibly be consumed by a human being is beyond me, though I have seen people eat and seemingly enjoy their smelly tofu on many occasions. If you are a true daredevil, give it a go, because if ever there was an acquired taste, and a truly exotic food, smelly tofu would be the ultimate expression of it.

cooking up scallion pancake and other goodies

Street food culture in Taipei is huge. There are tons of varieties of street food to be tried. You can find street food everywhere all the time, but the largest selection is at the night markets. Everything form meat on the stick and 20 different varieties of sausages, to dim sum, to soup and “international” goodies such as cheese fries and Indian curry wraps to veggie options like deep fried mushrooms, spring rolls and my personal favorite scallion pancakes. There is an art in selecting your street food- of course the cleanliness of the vendor must be taken into consideration. A line of people in front of the vendor is always a good sign, and then there is of course pure instinct.

Taipei is famous for it’s night markets, where you can buy anything your heart desires … That is if your heart desires cutesy kitschy things, designer knock offs, trendy clothing, “hello kitty” stationery and lots of street food. Shilin Market is the king of all Taipei night markets. It’s huge with one main street and many different small streets, alleys and pathways all around. You can spend hours and hours here, it’s bustling and rowdy and packed with people.  Shilin’s particular street food specials are oyster omelette, and my personal favorite- “small bun inside of big bun”- how awesome is that??? They also have tons of stands with super fresh exotic cut fruit, it’s the best dessert! There is something really fun about going to the market at night, can’t put my finger on exactly what that is, but trust me it’s a very cool thing to do.

at Shilin night market

If street food is not your thing ( although from what I gather, even if it was never your thing, in Taiwan you might reconsider) There are plenty of restaurants everywhere, and Taipei has all kinds of food to offer-Indian, English, Italian, Japanese, Thai, French and of course Chinese

One of my personal favorites is Grandma Nitti’s kitchen in Shi Da.  Great breakfast and even better brunch. Beware though- it does get pretty packed, and there could be a bit of a wait for your table.  The staff speaks English and is very friendly and nice, and since  it’s near a college, there is a nice mix of students, expats, and tourists. Sometimes the services takes longer than it should, but the place is so cute, cozy and lively that it’s not too much of a nuisance. I like the fact that you can refill your own coffee- so even if the food is taking a while, and your server is nowhere in sight, at least you have that . The area is  lovely, and walking around Shi Da with many small shops, cute whimsical streets and a nice relaxed vibe is a nice treat after a Sunday brunch.

Grandma Nitti's Kitchen

If you will be visiting Taipe for a while and need extensive dining options please do visit this girl’s blog Hungry girl in Taipei. I love her- she is truly obsessed with food, and is a great guide to Taipei food culture.