Strolling on the Boardwalk

I wanted to make the most of my first free day in Taiwan, so I went with Sasha to a boardwalk area in Danshui. Early Sunday morning, we walked a few blocks away from our dorm and got on a bus that took us to the Taipei main train station. The bus ride was only 60 NT which is the equivalent of about $2. At the Taipei train station, we successfully found a train that took us to Danshui. The greatest thing about the Taipei train system is that the trains are so clean!  I could probably eat off the floor and not get sick! Although I have no intention of trying that!

As I stepped off the train in Danshui, I could see mountains and water in the background! It was a short minute walk to the beginning of the boardwalk. We stopped almost immediately to watch a young performer, who was not very talented but very enthusiastic. A Taiwanese girl started talking to us in English. She was a good friend of this performer, and she informed us that it was the performer's birthday. She was a very nice girl who spoke very good English!

We continued our walk down the boardwalk, which consisted of many restaurants, food stands, stores selling various things, and art performers. We had some tofu at a food stand, but I didn't like it so much. I only ate half of it, and threw the rest away, when we saw this girl inside a restaurant having some wonderful looking soup. We went inside the restaurant and found out the girl was having pumpkin soup. We both ordered the soup, and it was absolutely amazing. It was definitely not traditional Taiwanese cuisine but sometimes you just need some food that reminds you of back home! In the restaurant we talked to a European girl who was studying aboard in Taiwan.

We ordered some more pumpkin soup to take with us back home, and then we continued walking along the boardwalk. We stopped in some stores to look around. My only purchases were an umbrella and a cheap alarm clock, that didn't end up working! We watched a caricature artist and spent some time looking at some beautiful personalized scrapbooks.

We started getting tired so we walked back to the train station. We took a train back to the Taipei train station. Once we arrived at the Taipei main train station we found some nice Taiwanese people who spoke English and were going to the same place as us. They helped us buy train tickets back to Taoyuan, and we followed them to the correct train. We got to Taoyuan without any problems and some good experiences of the country and people.