One of the things I love about Taipei is that no matter where you are in the city, you are never more than a twenty minute walk from some good hiking. It's great to be in the city and in every direction you look you see big green mountains off in the distance. It's calming to know that if you ever get too overwhelmed, you can easily escape into nature and unwind.
This is what kind of occurred yesterday. I have been going around town searching for a particular item and either stores don't have it, or the stores I know for sure have it, have now all closed down. Yesterday I had the luck of both of these things happening, and another store I wanted to try wouldn't open until the late afternoon. So to kill time and to recharge a bit, I took a five minute walk to the mountain and started hiking.
It was a short two hour hike, but enough to make me feel like I was in a whole different place. Above is a picture of the view. I usually don't like to use view pictures because they are pretty much of nothing. But this one is useful because it has a few things I can point out. Such as....
1. If you look in the foreground, the buildings by that small pond are for the center command of Taiwan's military. Actually it's funny because on google maps this area is blacked out, yet you can easily observe it from several spots on this hiking trail.
Also it's on the site of a former POW camp, where allied prisoners were forced to work in a rock quarry, to get the stones the Japanese needed to build their buildings. A small thing that pops into your head whenever you see an old stone building.
2. Across the river is the Dazhi riverside park that I showed some pictures of before. It's also where the migrant workers were yelled at for practicing the drums, even though that park is super noisy because of...
3. The domestic airport is in the middle of the picture. It was mainly used for domestic flights, however I've been told that now it has some flights to Japan, Korea, and perhaps some other popular close destinations. The main airport is about an hour out of town. At the moment the way most people get there is on the shuttle buses from Taipei, but thankfully in a few years there will be a subway line there. Actually this airport (the one in the picture) even though it's in the city, just got it's own subway stop recently.
I think that's it for the easily noticeable things in this picture. Well except for Taipei 101 but it's like that person who always squeezes their way in to every picture. You can't take a picture of Taipei without Taipei 101 popping into the picture.
