Taipei for The Romantics: a Friday-to-Monday weekend

Crowded with red threads and tiny cards: the temple's Old Man Under the Moon is the matchmaker locals queue to ask, and the couples queuing are quite serious.

Bring a beer from the convenience store and sit on the sea wall; the sun goes down behind Guanyin Mountain and the whole riverbank claps in a low murmur.

The Tainan dan-zai noodle house that has fed Yongkang since 1895: a small bowl, shrimp and minced pork, then a second bowl you did not plan on.

A Fujian courtyard house of 1783 moved brick by brick beside a lotus pond; a bench by the pond and the traffic noise of the flyover simply disappears.

The red Spanish fort of 1629, later the British consulate; the terrace garden looks down the river mouth toward the sea and is cooler than the old street below.

The Red Castle is a 1899 villa with a terrace over the Tamsui estuary; order the set dinner and stay until the lights come on across the river.

A merchant clan's 1850s mansion with ponds, moon gates and a stage; go slowly through the garden and you finish the last lane without seeing another couple.

A 1920s Japanese official's house that sheltered dissidents in the dark years; shoes off, tea poured at low tables, garden at the window. A pot between two is enough.

Cantonese tasting menus at Michelin-starred level: roast goose with plum sauce, double-boiled soup, the dim sum trolley's cleverer cousin. Book weeks ahead; this is the one splurge.

Baroque Qing-era facades above shops selling dried mushrooms and bolts of cloth; walk the north end first, where the herbalists have swept their steps and nobody is yet shouting.

Taipei's oldest temple, 1738, rebuilt after fires and bombs; incense drifts through carved dragon columns and the older women there know exactly how the fortune sticks work.

Hand-pulled dumplings and the soft-skinned beef noodle soup a veteran from Shandong made here for decades; a plain room, and a fair last lunch for two before the airport.