As a Coffee Break During Your Trip, Spend a Lazy Afternoon in One of These 8 Small Cafés

The super popular "A Room" coffee shop hidden in an alley is a café as well as a library. The café's Japanese style wooden furnishings, its tasteful old-school decorations and, most interestingly, the fact that it charges by the hour, have been praised by all kinds of young artists and writers. The business hours of A Room are divided into periods. From 09:00 to noon, it's in breakfast mode, when delicious light food and simple meals are provided. Then it moves into its "library mode", when the time-based charging of 60 Taiwan dollars (about 12 RMB) per hour comes into effect. Except for some dishes and drinks that you have to order separately, the café provides free hot water, green tea, American coffee and other drinks, as well as stationery. A large and diverse collection of magazines and books are available for you to read as you please. You'll feel at ease reading and writing here.

What kind of café would discourage slightly overweight people from coming in? Narrow Door Café opposite the Confucius Temple in Tainan is just this kind of place. Narrow Door Café, as the name implies, has a very narrow entrance, only about 38 cm wide. So if you're a little overweight, you'll need to be careful not to get stuck when you enter the café. After entering, you have two more hurdles to contend with. One is the narrow staircase with 3 bends that only 1 person can pass through at a time. The other is the narrow path from the sky garden to the toilet. If you want to see if you're defined as an overweight person, come to Narrow Door Café to find out! Of course, there is more to this café than the narrow door gimmick. This place is full of retro nostalgia, and if you sit by the window, you can enjoy the full greenness of the Confucius Temple just outside. There are many varieties of coffee here, including the Narrow Door specialty coffee and the floating iced coffee. Pair these with one of the sumptuous desserts and you'll be on cloud nine.

Zheng Xing Café is a masterpiece among renovated old houses in Tainan and one of the most famous art cafés in the city. The old house has a 60-year history, and people can't help but follow the smell of the coffee to come here for a taste of the old romance. The shopkeeper not only keeps the ancient flavor by using the street name, but has also kept the old red brick walls. Combined with the pentagonal hanging lights, the small loft built with cypress beams, the terrazzo ceiling, the old grandma bed, etc., they add a lot of charm to the old-style house. On display in the cultural works area of the café are many artists' works, local snacks, and all kinds of funny creative gadgets. In addition, Zheng Xing Café provides accommodation with room prices ranging from 2800 to 4800 Taiwan dollars (about 560–960 RMB). The charm of the old house combined with the South Sea vacation design sense make this a good choice of accommodation.

On Shennong street, the most artistic street in Tainan, there's a café in a refurbished old house named Funny Wenqing. It's really just self mockery! Many young literati come here for a cup of coffee just for its name and to see what's so funny. The café with its plain appearance reveals a different world when you step inside: the life-sized Flash and the Hulk, the nonsense zebra displays, the witch and ghost collection, the operating table used as a dining table... At first glance, it all seems disorderly, but every display is carefully crafted by the owner, and you'll be gradually attracted by this strange and fantastic mash-up style. Shennong Street, where the café is located, is the best preserved old street in Tainan. In recent years, many cafés, restaurants and lodgings have opened on Shennong Street. The old walls now sport modern street art and are great photo material.

Staghorn Branch, next to Tainan University, is a transformed old house that's nearly 60 years old. It mainly sells coffee, brunch and other light food. The owner has taught painting for many years, and because of this the café is named after Staghorn Branch, an ink painting technique, and has an unmistakable literary and artistic ambiance. With juniper wood tables and chairs, terrazzo stairs, nostalgic metal window grilles and Tatung electric fans, artifacts of past ages dominate the decoration in the café; moreover, all the furniture in Staghorn Branch was collected by the café owner over many years. An art major, the owner has made the old house even more charming by using what he has learned and what he loves to give Staghorn Branch its Japanese Showa style. The small courtyard in front of the house is also carefully arranged. All the potted plants, big and small, were planted by the owner himself. Sitting here, drinking coffee and basking in the sun is the pinnacle of pleasure. Next to the café is the restaurant that serves Tainan's most famous food, the food that people stand in line for: Ninao Gelato. You have to stop in if you're passing by.

Gandan means "simple" in Taiwanese. Gandan Café, near Kailong Palace in Tainan, pursues just this simplicity and purity: with few tables and furnishings, it doesn't depend on decoration and atmosphere. It just waits for you to stop for a cup of delicious coffee. This will be a taste you think back on for years to come. Gandan is another café transformed from an old house. Its facade is quite special. Three of its walls are made with old wooden window mullions stacked on top of one another and inlaid with frosted glass. It's very amusing in that you can't find the entrance right away. Of course, Gandan's reputation lies mostly in the quality of its coffee. The owner is a coffee lover. The café often provides more than 10 kinds of single origin coffees from different places around the world, and it insists on roasting the beans itself, which guarantees the high quality of its coffee.

Located in Xinyi Lane, Liangliang Café is run by a young artist couple. The cheerful and talkative owner is a designer, and his outstanding wife is a piano teacher. Liangliang Café flips the business model of ordinary artistic cafés The first floor is the exhibition space, and the café itself is located on the second floor, so that people from the neighborhood can walk into the house freely and enjoy the exhibited works free of charge without worrying about ordering any coffee. At present, the café provides barista-made coffee, espresso, cakes and made-from-scratch biscuits, all of which are handmade by the couple.

Film Brunch, hidden in a deep lane, is a reconstruction of the century-old residence of Xu Yuanfu, a famous photography master in Tainan. It's no wonder the word "Film" was chosen as part of the café's name. Film Brunch retains the traditional architecture style of southern Fujian. Although the building is not large in area, its mainly white walls and high ceiling make the space seem brighter and more spacious. Even though there are only about 20 seats in the café, it doesn't feel crowded. Many of master Xu's works hang on the walls of the café. The black and white photos, which bring back so many memories, infuse this century-old house with soul. In addition to coffee, Film Brunch also serves brunch, sandwiches and other light food all day long, all of which is guaranteed to be delicious.