20130604 - Taiwan trip day 3 Jiufen & Shifen

As day 2 was more for the kids, we decided to go somewhere to cater to the adults' taste for the next day. 

 

Our destination? Jiufen and Shifen for the old streets, food and the sky lanterns. 

 

 

Kids card (orange & white) . Adults card (orange, pink, blue & green)

We took a train to Ruifang station.  After we have reached there, we crossed the road to the bus stop in front of Wellcome (like Guardian?).  There were several buses there which will bring the people to Jiufen.


Me and mommy sitting on the train to Ruifang

We invaded the first dessert shop that we saw.


An orange, brown and white cat sleeping



A panorama of the view of Jiufen from a desserts shop

For lunch, we stopped at this famous fishball store.  Mommy was not so keen on the fishballs, but its lu rou fan (gravy meat rice?) was delicious - the meat literally melt in your mouth!  The portion was very small though :P


The menu of a shop in Jiufen famous for its fishballs.  Mommy prefers its lu rou rice though!

It started to rain then and we had to don our ponchos as many of the lanes are not sheltered.

There were many stalls selling all kinds of things.  We (mainly si yiyi LOL) tried out/bought different items such as ice cream pancake, hong Zhao duno-what (which looked like a bloodied red dough), baked crackers (with this very cute machine with a clamp of some sort that will heat up the raw ingredient and then pop the cracker out with a loud pop sound!), more desserts, honey lollipop, dried almond powder, red date powder, cookies etc.

The only way is up and we made our way up until we reached a 'logical stop' which allows us to look over the low wall into the scene below.  That was when the rain stopped and the whole place was so misty its beautiful!


Me with the clouds.  The buildings are so blur

After Jiufen, we took the bus back to Ruifang again (the boarding point for the bus is abit higher up, which is confusing) and were supposed to take the train to Shifen, but we boarded the wrong train (same platform but this other train came 5 minutes earlier and we did not know that its not going to the same place!)  So we ended up in the wrong place and the staff at the train station advised us to take a cab instead.

However, as there was only one cab outside the train station, we persuaded the taxi driver to squeeze all 7 of us into one cab! 


Me at the train station

The taxi driver was supposed to bring us to the Shifen waterfall but unfortunately the road leading to the waterfall was closed for renovation!  Then we had to walk in (about 20-30 minutes) and then we found this private garden which allowed visitors to take a shortcut to the waterfall and we asked for permission to trespass.

In the end, we realized that there was a shorter route to the waterfall compared to the road that we took to the Shifen waterfall (they call it a mini Niagara)


Me, Charlie and yy with the waterfall



Gong gong with the waterfall

After resting for a while, we followed the rest of the tourists and took the shorter route to Shifen station.


Me and the rest on a long long bridge

Near to the Shifen station, there were shops selling sky lantern for people to write down their wishes and then to release to the sky.  Alright, its a very environmental unfriendly thing to do. 

We bought 2 lanterns, one for K, and one for Charlie and yy.


Me with my sky lantern with me pretending to be a hero



Me washing a pet in a pet salon



A house with some fishes

Popo also bought a pair of lanterns to hang at home.

After writing down their wishes, the store assistant brought us to the railway track where we released the lanterns into the sky.

 



Us preparing to let Charlie's and yy's lantern fly into outer space



Up, up, up and it goes to outer space

 

 We went back (took the right train this time!) to Taipei after that and zzzzzz. 

Note : we only found out when we were back in the hotel that there was hailstones in Taipei that afternoon.... and ...well... we missed it .... (popo was quite disappointed that she missed it :P)