Weekend Getaway to Hualien

View from the train once I woke up

Rise and shine on Sunday morning at 6:00am to head to the coast. TOTALLY worth it. Katie, Lindsey, Carolyn, and myself were feeling the need for a little getaway, so we decided to book train tickets for the mountainous east coast of Taipei to a city called Hualien (wall-e-en). Our round trip tickets were about $20 US each for the 3.5 hour train trip.

This is how much room $10 US gets you

The hotel was only $50 US per night per person. So we pretty much booked ourself a pretty cheap vacation, and I believe we got way more than our money's worth.

We arrived at our hotel on Sunday at about 10am. Carolyn and myself, being Michigan Wolverine fans were mainly concerned about getting some wifi access so we could follow the end of the Michigan-Notre Dame football game. Luckily we were able to get access out by the pool :-). When Michigan won, we went nuts! Everyone a the pool thought we were crazy...even Katie and Lindsey. GO BLUE!

They made us wear caps the 2nd time in the pool
I was excited b/c they were Maize and Blue!

The beer is called Bar
The fruity beer tastes like champagne

Good to know...

After lounging by the pool for a bit, we were able to check in and get settled in our rooms. It was only 1pm, so we decided to make the most of our limited time and beautiful day. Our hotel had bikes for rent, so we went on a bike ride. This by the way was the first time I've been on a bike since middle school. I was wobbly at first, but as the saying goes, it was just like riding a bike...Anyway, our destination was a beach up the coast. On the way, we stubled upon a petting zoo-like place.

The name of the petting zoo. Very appropriate I think.

Love the beard

After tearing Katie away from the pig, we continued on our journey to find the beach and some food (it was way past lunch time). We eventually made it to the cliff overlooking the beach.

View overlooking the beach

Locking up the bikes and getting ready to walk down to the beach

Surprise, the beach was a rock beach. But still extremely beautiful. We were expecting it to be extremely crowded, but it was extremely deserted. We decided to walk down the beach toward the hotels, noticing a bit more life yonder. Even when we arrived at the civilization, we noticed no one was in the water. We later found out that because there is such a deep drop off (literally, go five feet out into the water and you probably won't be able to touch the bottom) and there is such a strong undertow that people don't typically swim in the ocean.

Rocky Beach

Katie making her way down the beach

The delicious looking caramel drink
Lindsey ordered at the first cafe

We found a cute little cafe, with Grecian decor. Since it was tea time, they didn't have a full menu of food (not sure if they actually ever have a full menu of food) so we ordered some pork dumplings to snack on. After the delicious dumplings, we walked further down the beach, which was slowly starting to get more crowded as people were settling in to celebrate the moon festival. On our way back, we stopped at another cute cafe and ordered milk shakes. We realized that dusk was quickly approaching, and hustled back to our bikes for the ride back to the hotel.

That night we hopped in a cab to go eat dinner at the Farglory Hotel. This hotel sits atop a mountain and has spectacular views of the ocean and mountains. It is truly spectacular. Since it was so dark, I was unable to take pictures, but below is one I got from the site.

Ready to head to dinner: Lindsey, Me, Carolyn, and Katie

The Farglory Hotel in Hualien, Taiwan

It was a great day and a relaxing night. The next day we planned to go see the national park and cliffs. That will be my next post.