4 Mar 2012 ~ Yangmingshan & Beitou

Listening to: Tashaki Miyaki ~ If Not for You (Bob Dylan Cover) : Tashaki Miyaki Sings the Everly Brothers

Follower beware...my posts are now out of order....

Today, I took an afternoon excursion to Yangmingshan National Park, to the north of Taipei. Yangmingshan was first used for growing wet rice and grazing water buffalo during the Qing period.

To my good fortune, it is spring blossom festival, and trees/flowers were in full bloom.

Birds and turtles can be viewed, in addition to gold fish and a lizard...two photos below have more than one...can you find all the animals?

A newly married couple was taking advantage of the blossoms for some professional photographs.

We also passed the Bei Tou waterfall

and an active volcanic activity being made into a Hot spring.

My final destination of Taipei was the Beitou Hot Springs, where I got to spend 45 minutes in mineral pools of various degrees of temperature. I could not take pictures as this was a "nude only" hot spring.
I then decided to buy a bottle of Taiwanese wine, a little too sweet for me, similar to a plum wine flavor, but nonetheless, a fabulous way to close this adventure to Taiwan.