Everybody has a little very random dream that always pops up in the head in the form of your inner voice that tells you" Yeah, it would be so cool to make it" or " One day I will probably do it"
I'm no exception. Passing by SBB train station every single day, I always had this little naughty thought to get on the first best train and get to the final station without even knowing what was that place. Finally "dream came true" and my destiny took me to Solothurn , which is situated around 30 minutes from Bern.
It was more than easy to do sightseeing in this place, since old town was separated from the train station only by river and as soon as I crossed the bridge I found myself on the square of the main church, which was the most impressive sight to see.
Central narrow streets, tangling from all sides, were bursting with colours, and architecture was far beyond expectations that in my case were not set at all.
The clock tower was indeed interesting. I remembered about the one in Prague, and though this one was not that big, of course, it was worth checking out.
Christmas attributes all over the buildings added festive mood and extra coziness to the walk.
Such gates surrounded the whole old town of Solothurn, embracing it into the circle and separating from the rest of the town, where a vast contract in architecture was to be seen.
Maybe it was a gut feeling of a frequent traveller or pure luck that brought me here but I couldn't be more happy with my spontanious little trip.
Song of the day:
There are some happy feelings in life that I want to recall every time I'm tired or upset. They make me smile at once, I start having the same feelings as at that very moment and those are the best seconds one can have.
Such feelings are rare but they are precious and are stored in the invisible pocket in my mind, where I can just turn to them in the course of my whole life.
This episode started as a simple adventure on scooters, chasing the sun that was going down. It was magnificent, as pretty much all sunsets I've seen in my life irrespectively to the place I've been to at that time.
Water was warm and I realized that for the first time I actually got into the water of the ocean. One of so many new things and feelings that happened to me in Taiwan.
As Coldplay sings "Your sky full of stars", I guess only now I understood what that phenomenon actually meant. Staying for a night on the beach was an amazing idea to fulfill. The sky was Full of stars, that were brightly shining over our heads, but seemed to be not that far away as usually. I couldn't make any proper picture, but everytime I close my eyes I can clearly see that sky, which I'm willing to observe forever.
After an inspiring night on the beach with amazing people around, marine breeze and a little campfire with some street food and just one hour of sleep, the crazy thing to do was waiting for us. On our rented scooters, we flew into the night streets in the direction to the dawn, to the rock where we could meet a sunrise on the ocean. Riding that scooter for the very first time was one of the most exciting things. The nature around just surrounded us with freedom, happiness and relaxation.
If there is something more beautiful than a sunset, that is certainly a sunrise. We watched how a vague light somewhere behind the horizon was expanding its features closer and closer. We saw how the sun was coming up from waters of the Pacific ocean. We witnessed how a brand new day was born.
It felt so natural to be there. I couldn't even think about anything else, I was just present and living each milisecond of this morning.
I felt more alive than any other time.
This pink hero was my reliable companion in this little adventure. "He" made me feel like I am a mature driver.
What is the best place to go on the hot summer day, when one can hardly bear the sun heat? Of course the Hot Springs! When they called this Thermal Valley a Hell Valley, they meant it literally. It's very unusual, however, just to stay near those fumes is quite a challenge.
When I see such amazing places I keep wondering how diverse our dear planet is.
The other important thing that made me reflect was religion. How many architectural masterpieces are dedicated to different religions. Just coming to a church or a temple makes me wonder how much skill it took to build each unique religious center.
Sometimes these temples happened to be in the most unexpected places, a bit "hidden" among different concrete buildings.
One of the smartest things that I noticed in Taipei was Subway. Not only was it clean and nice, but also, so many stations were named as places of interest, so even if one forgot to look up some temple at google maps, he would easily find the station at the subway. So basically, a subway is a good tour guide of Taipei.
Did I say that this country is amazingly beautiful? I guess I'm going to repeat this phrase in each post dedicated to Taiwan!
Yangmingshan National park is a true emerald kingdom of Taipei. It has a lot of hiking trails to offer. People go there to relax from the city's routine. It's an ideal place to get a physical exercise and at the same time to get relaxation and energy watching the nature.
The very first thing we encountered when we came to the park: the maps that were distributed to the tourists were all in characters, so apart from a green picture we had no clue which stations on a map were the ones we wanted. Even the touristic centers weren't that much helpful, since people didn't understand us enough in order to give proper instructions
So, we bought a round ticket that was a hop on- hop off option for some 60 TWD and decided to hit the road.
Our first destinantion was Erziping trail. The trail itself was very easy to master, since there were no slope hills. It was like going into one of those Asian movies where they show you a big dramatical story with the superpicturesque nature on the background.
Our next destination happened to be Qi Xing Shan 七星山. Firstly, when we looked at a map, we were wondering, why 1.8 kms would take approximately an hour to go. We understood it a few minutes later when we saw that there was no end to the "vertical" stairs that were leading in the direction of the sky.
We were passing rice fields and then old volcano that smelled like rotten eggs.
We reached at first the highest peak, which was a Qixing peak, then an Eastern Peak, which was another 0.8 km of hiking, since it was supposed to lead us to one magic pond that was a very tempting spot to visit. The only thing I can clearly remember is that it was the toughest hiking I've ever made.
And here it was, our main aim, main desired destination. The pond, that was calling us from fancy pictures from google.
Somehow when they were advertising Yangmigshan national park, they forgot to mention that this marvelous pond has already been dry for 20 years :)
