Tea Time

If you take the brown subway line to the very southernmost stop in Taipei (the zoo stop), you can ride a gondola up to the top of a little mountain and see cute little tea houses and hiking trails. Unfortunately the gondola line was crazy long by the time we arrived yesterday afternoon, so we settled for a taxi ride to the top.



We found a sign for a little tea house and followed the creaky wooden steps down a hill to the serving area. As the sign said, the tea and the view were "well," but the kareoke was ...ummm...not so good.


The server showed us how to steep and pour the tea in a complex ritual which involved brewing in one teapot and transferring to a second one for pouring, washing the cups with the first leaf brew, smelling the tea aroma in a pre-cup cup (see picture below), and finally drinking.


I think I would like to go back - to actually ride the gondola, to spend more time wandering the trails, to take more macro pictures of bees, and to drink tea at a house without a karaoke machine.