Tourist traps are the same everywhere!

Yesterday was a day of more discovering as we took the train to Neiwan south of Taipei. The town used to be the sight of a coal mining town. It is a tourist location now filled with many shops and restaurants. There is a river that runs through the town with a swinging foot bridge and a car bridge available for crossing to the other side. There are also hot springs in Neiwan which we chose not to go to...it's hot enough as it is. Now if we could find cold springs somewhere, I'd be in!

The kids and I walked around the town visiting the different shops. It is your typical tourist town with shops filled with cheap trinkets and t-shirts that say 'grandma and grandpa visited Neiwan and all I got was this lousy t-shirt'. Okay, I didn't see any t-shirts but the cheap trinkets were in abundance.

For lunch we ate at a quiet little restaurant with great food and quick service. Jess and Amingo ordered spicy beef, mapo tofu, and bird's nest fern. The spicy beef is pretty self explanatory. The mapo tofu was a spicy yet sweet dish of tofu and peppers which was my favorite dish to date. The bird's nest fern is a vegetable like spinach that is steamed. Our lunch was served family style with each of us receiving a bowl of rice.

The land of Taiwan is lush and surprisingly mountainous. It reminds me a lot of Jamaica with the flora and fauna and temperature. Every morning I have woken to the sound of birds chattering.