taiwan day 7: zhushan sunrise and more trains
here begins the account of my seventh day of my taiwan and japan trip. i would first like to begin with an apology to my dear readers: in my last post, i REUSED a capybara photo in the bonus. to make it up to you, this post will have an even more special super amazing bonus so make sure you read to the end :)
to start the day, our plan was to take the train to see the sunrise at zhushan. this is one of the most popular activities in alishan to the point that last night our hotel had a sign by the front desk that listed the sunrise time and the time when the train would leave to get there.
we had an early start: we woke up around 4 and headed out of the hotel around 4:15. we decided not to wait for the 4:40 bus from the hotel and walked to alishan station to wake up a little and grab some breakfast at 7-11. my 4:36 am coffee had a super cool bunny on it:
the fact that the sunrise is so popular should have come as a red flag, and in the end, it was a good decision we walked instead of waiting for a bus to the station: it was PACKED. to the point where my friend and i were looking at each other thinking "i don't think we're gonna fit on this train," and as far as i was aware, there was only one train headed to the viewing platform lol
FORTUNATELY (and because we got there early), we managed to get not only on the train, but SEATS on the train. pat on the back.
when we got to the zhushan sunrise viewing platform, it was ALSO packed; we tried to elbow our way to a spot against the railing.
unfortunately, it ended up being a little cloudy, so we didn't quite get the full sunrise experience, but it was still very beautiful.
after the sunrise, we decided to spend the rest of the morning looking around alishan and see the things we missed yesterday. but FIRST, we checked with the ticket office at alishan station one last time to see if there were tickets available for the train back to chiayi, and.... there were tickets available! this meant we had about an hour less to walk around, but it also meant my friend would get to ride the train down the mountain.
we bought our tickets and started our last morning of sightseeing. first, we went to the viewing platform on the roof of the hotel, which actually gave us a better view at parts of the hotel too:
then we headed towards the spots we didn't get a chance to visit yet: the shenyi waterfall and sacred tree station. on the way, we also saw the boat shaped bridge and another large tree:
the final sightseeing spot of alishan, the sacred tree station:
now that everything had been checked off the list, we headed back to the main alishan station to take the train down the mountain back to chiayi.
we were able to see some views on our train ride, but there was quite a bit of fog.
after arriving in chiayi, we headed straight for the hsr station to catch the high-speed train back north to taipei. once we dropped our bags at our hotels, we were huuunggry and headed straight for the ningxia night market in the datong district of taipei.
we got dinner at a nearby dumpling restaurant and i had my first taiwan beer of the trip:
and finally, to end the night, we overordered douhua dessert at beans village:
after going in and out of the mountains for a few days, it was nice to be back in the city! stay tuned for more sightseeing in taipei!! but first...
(more special super amazing) BONUS!!!
i'm not sure what to say...
