Our alarm was set much earlier today as we gotta leave Taichung for Cingjing mountain. We had racee the Nantou Bus Co's outlet the previous day. There were quite a number of people already waiting at the Bus Co as they operate buses to various destinations... Our hotel's sandwiches helped to fill our tummies! Upon boarding the spacious coach, we nap for the next 2.5 hours....zzz.
As the coach made its way up the mountain route, we saw the castle-like minsu which would entail a costly stay! Many thematic minsu (民宿) line the route, these are actually family-run inns, which offer you not just a stay, but also home-cooked meals and tours wif additional costs. It had proven to be popular wif both their domestic travellers and foreigners.
As we arrived earlier than the check-in time, our minsu had advised us to deposit our luggages at a restaurant near the customer svc ctr. We stopped by Starbucks for a short break while waiting for the restaurant to open. After depositing our bags, we went to the postal centre at Carton King to purchase wooden postcard to mail home... had fun collecting the stamps! haha! Since there were not really much options for lunch, we decided to lunch at Carton King (紙箱王), a theme restaurant. This innovative Carton King have a few outlets, which specialise in using cardboards to make all kinds of things, ranging from the tables & chairs in their restaurants to decorative pieces like Eiffel Tower etc. They even managed to make the paper waterproof! Their set lunch were worthwhile ~ I got a fried chicken set wif honey flower tea, while Ruby had a seafood set.
After filling our tummies, we ventured to the Swiss Garden next door... it's mid-afternoon by now and sunny! Hence, we were lucky to get blue skies & white clouds for our photoshoot! Juz as we were shooting at one point, the musical fountain suddenly sprouted! It's a wonderful sight as the pathway was lined wif Sakura trees too! The garden is lined wif different colourful flora and made a nice backdrop together with the mountain's fresh air! As we were snapping, i chanced upon 2 gals also shooting wif dslr, so we shot for each other! The shots turned out well ^o^
Then, we walked along the sakura lined path and i tried to frame the lake wif the sakura... we also experimented slow shutter wif the 'sunflower' windmills... At the end of the stretch, there's a nursery filled wif red & yellow tulips...these looked different from those we sighted yesterday. Nearing our end of the swiss garden tour, the temperature started to plunge... it got windy & colder! We decided to collect our luggages and phoned the minsu's staff to pick us up.
After a short wait, an uncle met us at the restaurant and helped us wif our luggages & drove us to the minsu. Our stay for tonite is 駿亦景觀民宿. During check-in, we query about the sunrise tour, but was informed that sunrise tour is impossible during winter as the road up the He Huan Mountain is closed till 7am. Hence, we opted for the half-day tour for an additional NT600. Upon check-in to our Princess Room, we fell in love wif our room! It has a king-seize bed, wooden flooring & a balcony! Juz a pity it started to get abit foggy & the lake view was shrouded by fog...
At 5.20pm
At 5.34pm
At 5.36pm
Finale @ 5.43pm
We ventured to the back-end route of our stay and wanted to walk the sunset path. However, we realised we were too late, since it would take half an hour to get up. As such, we juz walked a short distance & decided to enjoy the sunset view from here! Fluffy clouds or we called 'sea of clouds' (雲海) lined the horizon... it's the first time i am seeing this! I also tried to do a couple of panoramic shots wif my small camera. It's not easy! We spent an hour basking in this scenic location...
When we returned to our minsu, it's still early for our dinner so we continued shooting our room's interior... haha! At 7pm when we went down for dinner, we had to walk to the main reception building & felt really cold! Our host prepared a scrumptious dinner for us, consisting of 4 dishes & 1 soup + fruits. I had never seen ruby managed to finish so much food! We had a hearty meal as the home-cooked dishes were really delicious. ^_^
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