Jiufen

A 45 minute trip on a slow train headed northeast of Taipei will get you to Jiufen, an old famous mining town on the coast of Taiwan. We shopped, we ate, we squeezed through narrow alleys filled with teeming masses....

The town was cute, and the surrounding hills and coast were really quite pretty. Even though no one mines gold in them thar hills any longer, the waterfalls were still full of shiny metallic flecks. Did you know that the Mandarin word for waterfall is pronounced "poo poo"?

It was getting dark by the time we made it to the sea, but we were able to see the waves crashing against the shore before we traipsed back home to Taipei. It was nice. More pictures from our day trip to Jiufen are available here.