Six-day Chinese New Year 2011 holiday vacation

Our six-day Chinese New Year holiday vacation has finally ended last Monday. Everything is now back to normal, meaning we're back to work 9am-6pm a day, grocery at night, doing my online commitments at 9pm. Our holiday this year was shorter than the previous one. Before we had nine days at least. But no matter how short or long the holiday vacation is, this season is still one of my awaited moment of the year to have rest from work and to visit other places.

I share this event in a single post only. I know this could be pretty long but I tried at least to share to you where we have been and what we did in our past Chinese New Year holiday vacation.

Trip to Yilan. It was the first day of our Chinese New Year holiday vacation. Father Edgar, a Filipino priest here in Taipei invited us for a whole day trip at Yilan to see the Catholic Sanctuary of Our Lady of WuFongCi. Yilan County is one of the mountainous part of Taiwan and well-known for hot springs and SPA. At exactly 10am of Feb2, the four of us left Taipei (my husband Gerry, Fr. Edgar, and Vietnamese priest, Fr. Martin.) On the way to Yilan we passed the longest tunnel in Taiwan, the Hsuehshan Tunnel. The total length is 12.94 km, making the Hsuehshan Tunnel the second longest road tunnel in East Asia and the fifth longest road tunnel in the world. And it was indeed very long and very awesome!

Less than an hour we reached the place. We started to walk and we were about to climb up to that high part of the mountain. Have you seen the one that encircled in the image below? That was the cross of the church and that was our destination...pretty high!

Here we are together with Fr. Martin and Fr. Edgar with the amazing falls behind us. That was the first time in my life to see falls in super close up. We have been to Wulai once and I saw falls also (much bigger than this) but it was far from us even we were in cable car.

We reached the foot of the place which we were about to see. And of course before I made my first step on that stair, I've got to have a shot.

And finally, we reached the church. You see now the cross that I encircled on the first image I have posted above. I couldn't explain how I felt that time after I saw the cross, the church, the view, the statue of Our Lady of WuFongCi. It was like a journey to a holy place.

They said way back in 1980, a miracle happened on this mountain (highest part) where a miraculous lady appeared to some climbers who lost their way back home and this lady guided them to find the way of going back. They believed it was the Blessed Mary.

After taking some shots and smiles, we continued walking to a higher place of the mountain. We stopped up to this part because we were almost far. We're not actually prepared for mountain climbing because we really just wanted to see the church. They said it will take about 4 hours of climbing to reach the highest peak and we were not supposed to do that**LOL. I am afraid of heights and I was so afraid to look down but I tried because the place was very inviting.

We stayed there for couple of hours. We prayed, we took many shots, then by 3pm we started to walk down the mountain. We had so much fun and we felt the relaxing nature environment of the place which we did not experience in Taipei.

Stay home. This date was the Chinese New Year itself. We preferred to stay home since all establishments were closed, so silent, and solemn..so we did nothing but to clean up the house all day long instead.

Taipei 101/Watched movie. We went to Vieshow Cinemas (very near in Taipei 101) around 11am to watch movie, The Mechanic" (Jason Statham).

After we watched movie, we had our lunch at JS Doner Kebab, one of the famous Mediterranean cuisine here in Taipei. We ate the Chicken Kebab with Pilaf. This is our most favorite order at Vieshow Cinemas.

After we had our lunch, we went to Taipei 101 (as usual) since Vieshow Cinemas and Taipei 101 are neighboring buildings.

And of course my favorite scene to capture for Taipei 101:

After taking some pictures outside the building, we proceeded inside the Taipei 101 Mall.

Take a look at this shot:

Obviously this was taken in front of the Chanel outlet. I will make a separate post about those signature outlets at Taipei 101 mall. I have plenty of these kinds. My husband and I managed to make shots in different signature outlets inside the mall. As a matter of fact, this is not allowed (taking photos in front of the outlet) but we really tried our best to get ones for souvenir**LOL.

We left the vicinity of Taipei 101 almost late afternoon.

Jingmei Park. We love biking, playing badminton, and basketball. My husband and I have so much fun doing these together, and Jingmei Park is our favorite place for these recreations.

For our 4th day of holiday vacation, we went to Jingmei Park. We spent the whole afternoon biking around. Stop and snack. Chat and laugh. Smile and shot then biking again. The weather that day was very cooperative. The sun came out and we've got a lot of pictures to be kept and remembered.

Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall. This was our 5th day of hopping around and my second time of visiting the place. We've been here last year's Lantern Festival. The place is really huge, perfect for family bonding, kite flying, and picture taking. We went there together with our friend, Arnely.

I grabbed an image from Wikipedia (image below) so that you can see the entire hall in its top view (because this shot is impossible for me to capture**LOL) :

Click the image to enlarge

Just a bit of info: The total building area covers 29,464 square meters on an open space of 115,000 square meters. Recently it became a multi-purpose social, educational and cultural center for the Taiwanese public. (Source:Wikipedia)



Okay, this was the last day of our Chinese New Year holiday vacation and for our last destination, CostCo Warehouse.

The nearest CostCo branch in our place is in Hsinchu City, can be reached by two rides (bus) in less than 45 minutes (since we used to ride in public bus only). Our last visit in CostCo was four months ago. My most favorite to shop in CostCo are the Kirkland chocolates especially the one with almonds inside. Yummy!

Whew...that was a non-stop hopping. We had lots of fun and we had lots of pictures, too. I don't know if how many GBs this event consumed in my hard drive. For now I do not bother yet to check because I am busy doing other things but later I will do for I have to clean up my hard drive.

We followed exactly what we have in our itinerary then, except for one thing. We failed to visit Shilin Night Market because we felt very tired and we didn't have any "power" to do walking at night. So we decided to set it some other time.

So until here. Thank you for your time checking what we did last holiday. And don't forget to get back here to check for my next post about my souvenir inside Taipei 101 mall. Have a great day to all!