I blogged how yesterday Drew and I made everyone miss the train to go on our Miaoli trip but today luckily everything went smoothly for the most part. We left Taipei around 10:30am and arrived in Miaoli at about 12:15pm. We met our taxi driver there and he first took us to places to get lunch then we went straight to the strawberry fields to go strawberry picking. It was pretty sweet (yep, a nice pun lol) because basically we were given a basket and scissors and we could start picking our strawberries. There were rows and rows of strawberry plants and we didn't know how much we wanted to get since we were charged by weight. I bought about $250NT worth which is about 7 USD dollars. It wasn't really that bad considering I got a lot and they were fresh. First picture above is me picking the strawberries.
Then we went to a strawberry factory where they had everything made and designed of strawberry. Miaoli is known for their strawberries so Drew tried the strawberry sausage that we couldn't taste anything but we think the meat was marinated in strawberry sauce and the strawberry wine was pretty good. Then we tried fried strawberries that were drenched with condensed milk, drizzled in chocolate syrup, and topped off with sprinkles. It was okay..but I really liked was my mega strawberry creation. The second picture above is the insane strawberry dessert. It had a cookie eggroll, one marshmallow, several strawberries, three sugar frosted vanilla wafers, strawberry ice cream, malt (tasted like sugar ice cream), and to finish it off on the bottom was strawberry smoothie/juice. It was insane and before that I just had the fried strawberries, some strawberries I picked at the strawberry fields, strawberry wine, and strawberry bread. I'm definitely done eating strawberries for awhile lol I had a strawberry overload!
Then while we were walking around, we saw people doing a bungee jumping type thing on a trampoline lol Basically you had a harness and you could do flips and jumps since you were jumping on the trampoline. Drew and I did it but we had to wait for a long time since there were people in front of us that took forever. I'm proud that I did 2 flips but I definitely did not know how to do it lol Drew did awesome! He did 2 flips in a row. He was putting on a show lol Third picture is of me in the middle of doing a flip.
We had problems when we left the strawberry factory since the taxi driver wanted to charge us an extra $15USD because we were going to another city although we told them we were going there. We finally got things straightened out but our taxi driver was going to take us to another place to go sightseeing but we just skipped that and went straight to Zhunan that held the lantern festival. We got there and there was a huge night market so we got lots of snacks for our dinner and we saw the lantern festival. It was enormous and amazing! I've never seen anything like it. There were so many lantern displays, plus lights, decorations, fireworks, and shows/concerts.
Lantern Festival marks the last days of Chinese New Year and today was the last day of the festival itself. The festival was 3 weeks long and yet, there were a ton of people today. I think a lot of people showed up today too because we had a three day weekend. Today marks the day that many years ago Taiwanese people died and most people call it Peace Day. That's why I didn't have to work today and there were no classes. The last picture is of one of my favorite lantern displays I saw tonight.
Unfortunately since it was so busy, we didn't have any seats on the train and we had to stand for 1 1/2 hours on a packed train. It was tiring but definitely worth it. Then I went to Family Mart (a convenience store) to get my lego toys from last month's convenience store sticker promotion. I collected enough stickers from the last promotion to get 2 toys and during that month they were giving away legos that represented Taiwan's landmarks. Since they were running out, I was put on the ordering list and today was the day I could pick up my toys. I'm so happy I ordered it because I got the one that I really wanted! I got the Queen's Head landmark that I went to the past summer with my relatives. It's in Yehliu park and it's just a rock that is designed like a girl's head but everyone calls it the queen's head. It's exciting because they made a lego toy out of it and that's the one I wanted and I got it! Yay..so today was an awesome day to say the least!
-Chihchat
No comments:
Post a Comment