day trip @ yilan

this morning, i had the best breakfast of all my travel stays *yum*. the food served were the usual egg, salad (wafu dressing), corn soup, bread (croissant, soft bun and raisin bread), fruits, coffee ... but these stuff has never taste better probably because they were homemade and the ingredients used were soooo fresh!

arranged with 阿庆 to set out from rothenburg at 10am, he arrived punctually as usual. our first stop of the day - 传艺馆 recommended by him since it's along the way. initially i was kinda skeptical if it's one of tour group gimmick when the guide bought you to pre-arranged places to earn commission ... but i was proven wrong, the place is decorated like old streets and each of the shops carries an interesting range of products. i bought a mini-ocarina and a 'pandora' bracelet heehee. we also caught a live performance featuring 廖添丁 - it's kinda like a taiwan version of robin hood?

next stop is 小笼包！every dumpling was freshly made and steamed after ordering, so we gotta wait for quite a while for the food. but it is definitely worth the wait. unlike the ones we had back home, the dumplings are stuffed with spring onions and marinated pork. the soup within each dumpling is so sweet and we dont have to go with vinegar and ginger because the ingredients are fresh and well garnished. i will definitely miss these *slurp* very much regretted only ordering 10 of them to share... strong word of advice, if u ever visit this place, having 10 of these per pax is the bare minimum!

正常鲜肉小笼包@五结分店

after food, we next went to 几米广场, jimmy was known for his picturebooks and some of them were used as movie themes ... commonly known ones are "向左走，向右走", "地下铁", "星空". as part of urban uplift, jimmy (yilan native) has collaborated his artwork as part of the preserved historic domitory near yilan railway station. a quote that i like on the signage reads "希望生活的意义能被不断思考，希望多点笑容，多点想像，多点希望". i will have to say that the park is rather small but has a few of his iconic artworks, can u recognise any of these?

after taking pictures after jimmy square, we hop onto our next stop - 五峰旗瀑布. the waterfall is known to be named for the five peaks which look like triangular flags and there are three layers measuring approx. 100m from top to bottom. 第二段and 第三段 were pretty near, will take less than 15mins to reach. the viewing pavilion at these places were also packed with many visitors taking pictures. 第一段 took us probably 30mins or so to conquer. the endless flights of stairs finally lead us to this:

unlike the previous 2 layers, this layer had relatively less visitors. it felt so 'zen' admiring the works of nature =^_^= and over here, we met up with an elderly couple from taipei and had a pleasant chat with them. after the tiring climb, we head for our next caffeine dose up the mountain. we drove up to mr. brown coffee castle and the sea view from above was superb. if chance ever permits, i will love to be up here again on a fine weather day and just spend the day with a good book and my coffee.

mr brown coffee castle

on our way down from the castle, we dropped by toucheng old street and had a three-scoop ice cream (阿宗芋冰城) for just 40 ntd *cheap n yummy* gelato cannot fight muahahaha...

the day ended with a fabulous hotbath at jiaosi 森林风吕 and an awesome hotpot dinner at 美富海鲜火锅 ... everything was awesome today ^_^ according to 阿庆, we only covered one-third of yilan which means we have to come again!!!