A Day Atop Yangmingshan

On Saturday Rebecca, Johan, Eliza, and I decided to check out Yangmingshan National Park.  Rebecca and Johan were in the Neihu area (north east Taipei) meeting with a wedding planner so we decided to meet them after they were done for lunch, and then to head to Yangmingshan afterwards.

Rebecca recommended N.Y. Bagel for lunch.  The place specializes in bagels although they have a pretty extensive brunch, sandwich, burger, and pasta menu.  I've been craving eggs benny for a long time so I ordered them with smoked salmon underneath.  Johan also ordered poutine to share.  The prices are reasonable.  Eliza's chicken sandwich bagel rung in at $7 and my eggs benny was $10.

We're off to Yangmingshan!  Technically I think we're in the park right now.  It's located on Yangmin Mountain (Shan means mountain in Chinese).  This is part of the way up.

Massive ferns grew everywhere.  This one had to be close to 7 or 8 meters tall.

It was a bit hazzy and this was taken in the early afternoon.  The cloud cover was welcome though because it was already pretty hot and the clouds protected us from the scorching sun

The mountain has some hot springs dotted around it.  I don't know if this is a volcano or just a geothermally active mountain.  This area smelled of lovely sulfur!

The wedding planner had suggested to Johan about taking their photography package but it was filled with lame and really "forced" posses.

freaking cute!  Reminded me of Tinker

Near the top of the mountain is a large open green covered space.

There was a pleasant breeze blowing through which made the temperature feel perfect.  Probably somewhere in the mid 20's

Black cattle roamed free amongst the crowds.  They must be fairly used to it because you can walk up to them and they don't even blink an eye

The lone cattle...

hop on for a ride!

When a whole bunch of these guys are hidden in the shrubs and they start making loud whaling banshee noises it can be quite intimidating!

There was a crowd at the entrance where the cattle hung out, but as soon as you walked a bit further and the trail started heading uphill, most people stayed behind (great!)

Standard self portrait

That is Taipei to the bottom left in the valley

These guys were everywhere!

See if you can find all 6 cicada

piggy back?

spying on Rebecca and Johan near the top of the peak

our favourite pose from the wedding planner's catalogue

we reached the top!  Beautiful view over the valley!

A handful of cicada were flying around up here.  Run run Johan!

One flew right at me and landed on my shoulder!  Eliza wanted a picture...

hai-ya!

look at that vertical!

not sure why we're doing this...

but it's fun :P

The path that lead to that peak (1km) looped back around another way (2km) so we took the long route back with nearly no one on it.

There were tons of cicada in this little portion of the path.  Johan run!

Eliza pointed out this fuzzy black mass on the ground.  Hooray it's ants having a feast on a grasshopper

I love how there's absolutely no one around

why can't all Chinese names be that easy to remember?

Towards the back side of the mountain it started to get very misty.  I would have loved to hike down some of those trails but it was getting late.  Perhaps another time!

if you look closely, another cicada has landed on the back of my neck.  they love me apparently.

There is a free public foot onsen (hot spring) close by that we stopped to check out.

The water is hot but not boiling!  (I think they mix it with cold water)

There's also a gender separated full-body hot spring attached to this area but we were happy in the foot one

another pose from the catalogue

and another!

happy feet!  The minerals in the water made our skin feel silky smooth

It started to get dark as it was around 7 or 7:30pm

We headed down off the mountain and found a beef noodle soup restaurant that a few bloggers were recommending (according to Rebecca's research)

It was a charming little hole in the wall and we thought it would have made a great set for a movie.

Rebecca ordered the pork

Eliza had veggie soup

And johan and I had the beef noodle soup.  It was good!  Not as good as that place I posted about before near the passport office, but this one was really nice and "light" tasting.  Not too much salt and the veggies helped lift the heaviness of the meat broth

There's a shot of the restaurant from the outside!

By this time we were exhausted and Johan dropped us off at home.  A fantastic day with our two good friends.