From the Archives

During the last several months I have gone on a number of outings, sometimes with my family, sometimes on my own, that for some reason or other have not been worth making separate posts about. In some cases it’s because I’ve already written about the place and I didn’t feel the need to add another post. In other cases it’s because there wasn’t enough interesting aspects to write a full post about. Whatever the reason, I’ve ended up with a bunch of photos that I would like to upload somewhere, but they don’t really fit on the blog. To remedy that situation I’ll be uploading the best photos from all those little excursion in this post; hope you like them.

Snow in Taiwan
While it gets surprisingly cold in Taiwan during the winter it’s usually not cold enough to get snow. Last year was an exception; one weekend in December the temperature dropped lower than normal and we actually got a little bit of snow up in the mountains. Though me and the wife have seen plenty of snow before, we both thought it’s so unique to see it in Taiwan that we directly planned a trip up into the Hsinchu mountains as soon as we saw the weather report. This is what it looked like:

Xiao Wulai
The wife and I have been to Xiao Wulai many years ago. When we were planning a trip to Yilan together with my German colleague Lukas and his family, we figured it would be a good place to stop. It’s more or less at the half way point on the way across the island, there are some nice things to see and it’s family friendly. We had a good time there, but there’s not all that much to say about it. Since I was carrying a baby I couldn’t really focus on getting the perfect shot but still managed to capture a few good ones.

Central Taiwan
A couple of weeks after our trip to Yilan, Lukas and his family joined us in central Taiwan for a weekend. We took them to a couple of places that by now are quite familiar to us, but very cool for someone who didn’t go there before. The first was Tianwei, a small town known for its many gardening shops. It’s not super exciting, but a nice place to spend an afternoon. For some reason I never take too many photos when I’m there, I just enjoy riding around in the small streets and alleys on a rented bike, just kind of looking around. The second was the Rainbow village, a cool but by now rather touristic little village that’s been painted in bright colors by an old man who wanted to save it from demolition. I wish I could take more photos there but there’s always too many people around, blocking my shots or getting into frame so I only got a few worth posting.

Random
Here’s a bunch of mixed photos from a couple of very small excursions. Not much else to say about them

Nantou
So far this year we’ve made three trips together with Lukas and his family. I’ve mentioned both the first and second above. The third one went to the mountainous Nantou County at the very center of Taiwan. As can be expected from a mountain region we went hiking. First in a place called Xitou Nature Education Area which, as you can probably tell from the name, is rather touristic and family friendly with paved trails, but nice nonetheless. The next day we headed up towards a place called Dalunshan Lookout. As we were driving it started getting misty and with that, the landscape along the road started looking increasingly fairytale-like. We were so eager to get out and look around that we stopped at the nearest parking space and did a short hike right there, never actually reaching the lookout. Walking up through mist shrouded tea fields was really magical and I managed to snap a few shots that really capture the feeling.

With the mist enveloping the tea fields it feels like a fairytale