Relaxing in Encinitas

by dennyglee Categories: Foodie Friday · Travel TuesdayTags: · · · · · 1 Comment

Just north of San Diego, there is the wonderful town of Encinitas.  It is a nice relaxing surfer (or beach bum) town with excellent dining in the heart of the town itself. Juanitas Taco Shop A great little taco shop right off of North Coast Highway 101 that is not your normal tourist cafe – which is perfect!  While normally a corn tortilla fan, they have the best wheat tortillas.  This is a picture of the to-go carnitas plate where the beans are creamy, the rice is delicious yet light, the meat is flavorful, and the avocado and salsa were…

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An all too brief stop over in Tainan (台南)

by dennyglee Categories: Foodie Friday · Travel TuesdayTags: · · · · 6 Comments

For anyone who regularly visits Taiwan, the city of Tainan can easily be missed with the other three major cites of Taipei, Taichung, and Kaohsiung.  Yet that would be a grave mistake if you consider yourself a foodie.  A word of warning, driving in Tainan is atrocious – there are only two major roads going into the city off of Highway 1.  Yet if you brave the driving conditions and/or decide take the train (HSR or TRA), make your way to the old historic district and you will be pleasantly satiated with all sorts of Taiwanese small eats (台灣小吃).  This…

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Taipei Main Train Station has some good eats!

by dennyglee Categories: Foodie Friday · Travel TuesdayTags: · · · Leave a comment

Like many other big cities, the Taipei Main Train Station is a major transportation hub that handles the Taiwan High Speed Rail (HSR), Taiwan Railway (TRA), and the Taipei Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) Subway system.  But in all of the chaos and craziness of moving thousands of people daily is a gold mine of great Taiwanese food – also known as Taiwan Small Eats (台灣小吃).   Here are a couple of my favorites. Potstickers and Hot & Sour Soup This little shop on the 2nd floor of the train station is technically a dim sum restaurant called 小南門點心世界（微風美食廣場）.  Its been around…

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Travel Tuesday: Sagrada Famila

by dennyglee Categories: Travel TuesdayTags: · · 3 Comments

For this Travel Tuesday post – allow me to share some personal photos from the beautiful Basilica I Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.  This is one of Antoni Gaudi’s most amazing and famous works merging Gothic, Catholicism, and  Art Nouveau.  For more information, check out wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagrada_Fam%C3%ADlia Though it is an incomplete work of art that will take decades to complete, it is well worth visiting and touring this UNESCO site.  Important biblical events are depicted all throughout on the exterior walls of the basilica. It is a testament to Gaudi’s vision to have drawn…

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Foodie Sunday: Fugu at 虎福亭 in Tokyo

by dennyglee Categories: Foodie Friday · Travel TuesdayTags: · · · · · · Leave a comment

Okay, normally the foodie posts are done on Friday but after some tweets back and forth, I was inspired to write up the awesome experience eating Fugu (河豚) when we got a chance to visit Tokyo a few years back (thanks for the inspiration @sqlbelle!). For starters, you have to make sure that you order fugu from a sushi chef that has a long history of experience with fugu – one wrong slice and … you’re not going to do so well, eh!?  Near the front of the restaurants that serve fugu, they have a sign showing the number of…

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Travel Tuesday / Foodie Friday: Hong Kong

by dennyglee Categories: Foodie Friday · Travel TuesdayTags: 4 Comments

Note, this travel tips blog post is about six months in the making since I had visited Hong Kong back in March!  Nevertheless, Hong Kong is one of my favorite places to visit and I’m including a bunch of random thoughts about our (my family joined me – yay!) visit to this amazingly vibrant city. For starters, this city is a foodie’s paradise! While visiting the city, we had the luxury of having an old friend of ours be our tour guide.  And she was telling us that she had friends from Singapore (another foodie paradise) come to Hong Kong…

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Travel Tuesday: Top 5 reasons to go to Costco in Taiwan (from a US expat)

by dennyglee Categories: Travel TuesdayTags: 1 Comment

. . . I love Pittsburgh, they put fries on nachos here. — Pete Lattimer, Warehouse 13 . . . For those un-familar with the reference, Warehouse 13 is an awesome Syfy show…and Costco is a warehouse store – yeah, weak connection here. Yet another themed blog series Starting with the recent Foodie Friday blog post (Foodie Friday: Taiwanese dessert 芋圓), figured I should add another non-geek themed blog post series – Travel Tuesday – probably every week or two, eh?! Okay…so what’s this about Costco? yeah right – so back to the title of this post – what are…

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