Jiufen and Dansui

I'm Back! Did you guys miss me. Well I can say for sure that I haven't any of you for even a moment. I am so joking! Of course I miss all of my faithful readers.

Anyway I have two great experiences to share with all of you. The first is I had the opportunity to head up into some more mountains. I don't know if many of you know this, but there are mountain everywhere here so if you hear a lot about them, that is why. Anyway, up near the coast there is an old gold town and you know about the fates of those towns. Well this town has been made immortal by the Miyazaki Spirited Away. I took pictures from one of the main places in the movie and I wonder if any of my readers will recognize it.

The town is very quaint, I think that is the appropriate word. It has a very heavy Japanese influence with small winding streets and very neat style buildings. The setup is much like a night market, but mainly centered around one street. There are lots of interesting things though to be found off of the main street as well so it is has been a great idea to get off the main path here in Taiwan for discovery. The sight of the the shore from the area is really nice as well along with more mountain views. This combined for a wonderful experience.

The next place to visit was Danshui. This is a very historical place that experienced a decline as a port city after it silted up. However tourism and the determination by the local population has saved much of the history and tradition. We started off at the bottom of this area and took in some sights from the river. Next we moved on through the market to view old movie theaters and even a temple. I got lost will waiting for some squid to cook. They march us around like shoulders and I have to eat constantly if they are going to have me moving all the time. We visited a little white house which served as the customs house during the Qing reign over Taiwan. We capped off that part of the trip to the former British consulate on the island and the Fort of Santo Domingo established by the Spanish.

After that we were able to descend down to the river mouth where the Love bridge is located. It is a bridge that man couples supposedly cross over, but it has turned into a major tourist attraction full of families, tourists and stampeded of children. Dangerous to say the least. We had a short moment to take on the bridge and pier, but couldn't enjoy the sunset because of CLOUDS. It was sunny for most of the day too.

Don't forget that there are always new pictures being added. I will upload two albums for these trips so that you can enjoy all the images that I have gathered. I am still not sure what is going on with trying to upload videos, but it is still a struggle. But as always I am always working to figure it out for you!