Thursday, May 12, 2011

week 34_bus ride to Beitou

Somehow, we had taken our time last weekend on Saturday and so the Elephant Mountain hike didn't happen until Sunday afternoon. We were pretty beat after the hike - mostly just because of the heat! So, mistakenly thinking that we should catch a bus ride home instead of walking the 15 minute trek... we hopped onto a bus whose route included a stop at Taipei City Hall MRT station (that's typically our stop).

Shame on us! We should have walked!
It turns out the bus had just come from our stop - woops - and was headed along the rest of it's route. At first we were unsure, but even once we determined as much, we figured "What the heck? We'll just ride along and get a mini tour of the city until it loops back, right?" WRONG! As it turned out, our bus continued on a one-way journey to the suburban mountains outside of Taipei for an hour and a half before ending the line at the Bus Depot and the driver more or less booted us off, finished up his shift and parked the bus. Yep!
(No pictures... we were just on a bus... with Taiwanese people... maybe you can picture that?
Oh - and picture the end when the bus was finally empty, and the bus driver looks in his mirror at the two moron foreigners just sitting in the back and starts speaking to us loudly in Chinese... Yep...)

We had ended up at the base of some mountains - which could have been cool - but having just finished a hike elsewhere, we weren't exactly ready to go again yet.

Because we had traveled so far, it was going to be pretty pricey to hail a cab home, so we crossed the street to the opposing bus stop and got back on another bus. Wow. Thankfully, this time we had the good sense to get off at the first MRT station we came to and boarded the train to head home. But... after having sat on the bus for an hour and a half, I was ready to be out exploring once more; we decided to get off at a station called Chang Kai Shek Memorial Hall so that I could show the hubby around the city a bit more.

Ha! Nice to be able to show my husband what really happens when I go out adventuring... :)

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