Sunday, April 15, 2007

Jiufen

I went to Jiufen yesterday with Jenna.
Jiufen is a very touristy place - it's an old town that was apparently "rediscovered" by the Taiwanese public after a hit movie was set here recently, and now it draws large crowds from Taipei every weekend.
There's no direct train service - you have to take a train to Rueifang and then catch a bus or taxi to Jiufen. As soon as we hailed a cab outside Rueifang train station, the driver asked us, "Jiufen?"
Jiufen is full of old teahouses. What was the first place we saw when the taxi let us off? A Starbucks. (A Starbucks that apparently gets lots of foreign tourists - it's the first Starbucks I ever went to with Jenna where the staff seemed actually impressed with her spoken Chinese - which is pretty good, I'll admit.)
This is a long covered road full of snack stalls and shops selling little touristy trinkets. Lots of bracelets and statuettes for sale - there was one store devoted to ocarinas too.
Jiufen snack food.
That same covered street has calligraphers and painters as well.
This is a street where most of the teahouses are located - it's built into a hill so it's almost one long staircase.
The Pacific Ocean, as seen from the teahouse where we settled down in late afternoon.

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