Soup and his parents were invited to a birthday party on Saturday, so Taylor and I got the opportunity to entertain ourselves. A day without Soup should have been horrible. As it turned out, it was a wonderful day experiencing the contrasts of Taiwan.
At Chia's suggestion, we decided to take a trip to
Yangming Mountain. We started our journey on the Red MRT line and we got off at
Jiantan station. We are totally comfortable on the MRT because everything is well signed in both Mandarin and English. And the announcements of upcoming stops are also both in Mandarin and English. At
Jiantian station, we transferred to the Red #5 bus. That was more challenging because there was no longer any English. However, with the help of the nice information woman, we learned the Mandarin character for "red" and got into the right line for the bus.
We rode the Red #5 to the end of the line at
Yangminshan Bus Station. Next we transferred to shuttle bus #108. That also was quite straight forward. I asked the driver if the bus stopped at
Yangmingshuwu and he said yes. Sure enough, after lurching up the mountain road while hanging onto the swinging handles (there weren't many seats) we arrived at our stop, and other passengers told us to get off. There we were on a deserted mountain road. We eventually found the sign pointing to
Yangmingshuwu, the mountain retreat of Chiang Kai-shek, which is nestled into the foothills of
Yangming Mountain . We followed the directions down a forested road and eventually found our destination. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the house, but the grounds were exceptional.
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| Grand entrance |
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| I can imagine sitting at this little table for afternoon tea while enjoying nature. |
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| The house is painted dark green to blend into the mountains, and is built as a fortress. It has the 1970s style that was popular around Portland. It's really quite lovely. |
After a few hours learning, in Mandarin, about Chaing Kai-shek, we trekked back up the hill to the bus stop. Destination:
Qingtiangang for a walk through the mountain grasses and see the water buffalo. We flagged down bus #108 (buses don't stop just because you're at the bus stop, you have to flag them down) and this time we were fortunate enough to get seats. After a few stops, I showed the bus driver our destination and pronounced it as best I could. He signaled, get off now, so we did.
There we, up in the mountains, at a place called
Erziping. Not even close in pronunciation or location to
Qingtiangang. We weren't where we intended at all. What should we do? We walked around the parking lot, read some signs, and picked out a hike that didn't look too long in duration. There were lots of people around this time, so we felt all should be well. And it was.
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| The trail looked like this all the way. The paved part on the left is for wheelchairs. |
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| Here's what we found at the end of the trail. If we were better prepared we could continue to climb the mountains. |
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| The valley at the end of our trail was totally charming. |
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| This is such a contrast to downtown Taipei, and yet we're very close to town. |
After enjoying our picnic lunch, the rain started, so we hiked back to the bus stop, and reversed our trip back to our own neighborhood.
After being out in the mountains, we were pretty hungry so we decided to have dinner at the food court in Taipei 101, at Din Tai Fung. This was not the typical food court meal. Here are three of the most unusual looking foods.
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| Dumplings stuffed with sticky rice and pork. |
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| This is how the pot stickers arrived at the table. We weren't sure how to eat them. |
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| The pot stickers look like this when we flipped them over. |
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| I enjoyed watching the men make the dumplings. |
As we left the restaurant and started walking home, we looked around and marveled at the variety of sights we had seen today. The city is so different from the mountains.
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| Taipei 101 |
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| A lovely fountain |
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| Walking home after a lovely day. |
Our day without Soup wasn't as horrible as we anticipated. Plus, we have some lovely memories of Taiwan.
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