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2015/03/10

Taiwan Travel Diary #4: 15th day of Lunar New year & Yangmingshan Flower Festival


Hey everyone~ the past few days have been quite busy, and I still got so many photos I have to edit before I upload them. I actually gotta split my post about last saturday up into two parts because I took so many photos on that day !

But first, let me tell you about last wednesday:
Last wednesday was the 15th day of lunar new year, and on that day one is supposed to eat 湯圓 .
Tangyuan are made from glutinous rice flour, filled with sweet fillings (like red bean paste) and then boiled. So for that day, our university held an event for international students during which we did not only made Tangyuan, but also a hugeee amount of Dumplings (水饺 ). 

But first, we played a quiz. If you got a question right, you get a small prize:

Some kind of toy...no idea how it works though.
We had split into groups of 10 people each and went off to make dumplings:


Our group was super fast, we made so much that we ran out of dumpling skin and even out of filling! So other groups just gave us half of theirs since they hadn't made even remotively as much as we had yet.


Unfortunately we didn't manage to cook them all as it was just too much 


After that we started making Tangyuan.


They were quite difficult to make, as the white rice flour was super sticky. you had to fill it and then roll it in your hands to make sure the filling is securely wrapped.





 On Thursday we have conversation class and this class is by far my favourite. This time the topic of discussion was "Drinking games in your country". As neither the Korean girl nor I knew any drinking games we had to depend on the japanese guys for help, and one of them introduced Bunny Bunny to us. Super funny, and quite hilarious. It was a lot of fun but our teacher filmed us...and put it on her facebook. And this week, we actually have to do it in front of the whole class....whaaat~


On saturday, we went up Yangmingshan to see their flower festival. We mostly just wanted to see the cherry blossoms. The scenery was absolutely gorgeous!


To get up to the flower festival (it ends on March 15th, but the park is still there afterwards of course), you need to catch bus line No.260 up the mountain. During the festival, they actually have a bus station called Flower Festival parking lot, I'm not sure which bus stop is the proper one for the park during the rest of the year.


happily taking photos of Cherry blossoms


While the rest of the park was remotively empty, the areas around the Sakura trees were quite crowded with people trying to take photos. Like us.





I was happy we went on Saturday, because even though the flower festival goes on until the 15th of March, the cherry blossom petals were already falling down slowly.

I managed to catch one!


This post is quite full of photos of myself, whoops. But if you have such gorgeous scenery, that's a reasonable thing to do, right?




There were super pretty spots around every corner. Someday, if I can improve my photography skills enough I would love to do a photoshoot here with someone.

We didn't even notice the woman in the background. Oops.

We didn't really follow a map or anything, we just walked around to whatever place looked nice. Maybe we missed some nice spots, who knows.



There were also other pretty flowers other than the Cherry blossoms.
But if you have Cherry blossoms, they will steal all the attention for sure.




I can only recommend visiting this park, even when it's not Sakura season. 




During our visit it was quite warm, so many people also did a picnic there.



There are a lot of mosquitos there, so make sure to either were longsleeved clothes or bring some protection spray against insects.


They also had ducks and Koi fish!


And some areas lined with street food stalls, or people selling things.


There was also a blind musician playing "Little Apple" on a Qi.




At the end of the festival, they had a big flower field that actually was used as a clock!


(We kind of tried to imitate those figures)


 They also had a few other statues on the way to the parking lot.



Goodbye, flower festival~


Some flower pots looked like little piggies, how adorable! 



Some statues were a bit weird. But funny.


So that's it, I hope you're smiling right now and not looking disapproving like the buddy on the photo right above :P
Another post about the rest of Saturday (we went to see the Taipei Lantern festival) will follow soon ^-^
Tell me your thoughts in the comments below, do you like Cherry blossoms as much as I do? :D


Love, Lydia


1 Comments:

  1. There is beautiful cherry blossoms here in 淡水 too, you should come!

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for commenting ^-^