the gondolas and the station have been taken over by Hello Kitty. who doesn't love Hello Kitty?
Saturday was warm and the lines were long, but worth the trip I think. we were crammed into a gondola with four strangers, and up we went through the mountains...
I'm hoping the next time I go to Maokong it will be clear. if you look closely you can spot Taipei 101 through the haze. that large building on the near hill is some kind of temple/monestary which you can also get off at the second gondola stop and explore.
we got off at the top station and took a right. there were signs for a temple, so we wound our way around a road to find it. there were plenty of tea houses offering drinks and snacks along the way, though I think some of the more famous ones are to the left of the station. each sign we found pointing to the temple seemed to lead in a different direction and the distances were misleading, and eventually we started down a "trail" [otherwise known as a brick-paved path] such as the one above.
after an hour of wandering around [not entiely unpleasant, because the air was fresh and the trails were nearly empty] we found a temple. I'm not sure if it was the temple we were searching for, but I found a stairway in the hillside that let us climb up to be eye-level with the roof dragons.
worth it.
+ how to get there +
take the wenhu [brown] line on the MRT all the way to the Taipei Zoo station. leave via exit 2 and walk to the large glass building covered in Hello Kitty gondola cartoons. you board the gondola on the 4th floor. use your EasyCard or pay 50NT for a ticket all the way to the top. [tickets for glass bottom gondola costs more.]
the cup of coffee that fueled the writing of this blog post was sponsored by Polly. she drinks her coffee with lots of milk + sugar, and blogs about travel and expat life over at A Girl and her Travels.
