Saturday morning we hopped onto the high speed rail and travelled north to Taichung, the third largest city after Kaohsiung and Taipei. It's in the center of Taiwan, which is what the "chung" part means. Taipei is in the north, "pei" = north; Tainan is in the south, "nan" = south; and Taitung is in the west, "tung" = west. This is a very organized country.

Even the agriculture is organized, or at least that's how the rice patties looked out the window.

After the train we took an hour bus trip up into the mountains to Sun Moon Lake.

What a wonderful way to spend one of our last weekends here in Taiwan. This place is beautiful. The color of the lake is an unusual greenish blue, it's nestled in the western edge of the central mountains and not hard to get to, either from Kaohsiung or Taipei. It's as touristy as one can imagine and caters to the busloads of tourists from the big cities and mainland China. But if you stay away from the cruise boats and bars you can have the biking and hiking trails pretty much to yourself.

We stayed in this cute little hotel perched on the side of the lake at the edge of town.

 The view from the room was spectacular.

 This was the early morning mist on Sunday from our hotel room window.

After we arrived on Saturday we rented a couple of bikes and headed out on the bike trail that skirts around about a third of the lake. It was relatively busy for the first part but thinned out quite a bit after a few kilometers.

There was also a walking path along the lake's edge in town that we visited before dinner.

We had dinner at one of the many restaurants along the lake. On the menu: tea and jellys (think bubble tea pearls and jello jigglers), hot pot and a mango smoothie for dessert.

On Sunday morning we found a hiking trail up Maolan Mountain to a tea research center. Although it was hazy with the morning humidity the views were still pretty nice and we felt like we had hiked to the top of the world.

I'm glad we finally made it to this lovely place. There are other areas we will not make it to - the Alishan Mountain region, Green and Orchids Islands off the east coast, the Penghu Islands to the west. I'm not sure if I'll ever make it back to Taiwan once we leave, but I've got places I'd like to visit if I do return.