Category Hiking
Every couple of weeks I have a Saturday or Sunday afternoon off to relax by myself without having to worry about my son (my wife gets the same deal). Lately I’ve been trying to turn these afternoons off into little adventures by finding hiking trails that are reasonably challenging yet short enough that you can finish them in a couple of hours. As a busy dad, I find that this kind of hike is a perfect way for me to clear my mind and make my body comfortably tired. So far I’ve been on two such mini adventures
The Xianshan … Read the rest
Like the name suggests, Five Finger Mountain (五指山) has five peaks in a row, like fingers on a hand. Me and the wife were there several years ago but at the time I wasn’t really into hiking so we only hiked the relatively easy Traverse Trail (called crabwise trail on some maps), never reaching any of the peaks. In the last couple of years however I’ve taken more of an interest in hiking so when my friend posted about it on The Map Room I became intrigued; it seemed like a fun hike that would be suitable for me. Due … Read the rest
I’ve previously written about two parks that are underneath major roads in Taiwan; the semi-abandoned Wuri Tank Park and the strange art exhibition/miniature world under the Dali Creek Bridge. Last weekend my wife found another similar place called Shalu Leisure Landscape Trail (沙鹿休閒景觀步道 in Chinese). For some reason, this one also happens to be in Taizhong city; perhaps the citizens of Taizhong really like to utilize the available space.
Like the name suggests, this is a hiking trail, or rather a strolling trail, because to be honest it’s far too flat for any actual hiking. It’s roughly two … Read the rest
My friend runs a website called The Map Room which focuses on hiking, river tracing and other outdoor activities in Taiwan. He has written a series of posts called Learn to Hike in Taiwan which, as can be expected from the name, provide the reader with some basic information about hiking trails suitable for beginners. Since we have to bring our son along for hiking, I figured it could be a good idea to try one or two of the trails from this series, just to see how well it works while carrying a toddler on your back. We started … Read the rest
In my last post I talked about hiking Wuliaojian. I liked it a lot because most of it is proper climbing and not just walking along a smooth trail. However, it’s rather physically demanding which means it’s not suitable for everyone. The same weekend as I went to Wuliajian, me and my wife also decided to bring our son out for a short hike somewhere. My wife found a trail called Xianshan Trail that seemed suitable for us so we went there. It turned out to be an easier, less demanding alternative to Wuliaojian.
The trail head is at … Read the rest
I can’t remember who gave me the tip but ever since I first heard about it I’ve wanted to climb mount Wuliaojian (五寮尖山). Due to circumstances I haven’t been able to until now. I have to say right from the start that I’m really happy I finally went, because it’s a really good climb. The mountain isn’t particularly high, only 639 meters, but there are several near vertical sections that require some proper climbing and you more or less need to use the fixed ropes to get up or down. This makes it a lot more exciting than your … Read the rest
During the last several months I have gone on a number of outings, sometimes with my family, sometimes on my own, that for some reason or other have not been worth making separate posts about. In some cases it’s because I’ve already written about the place and I didn’t feel the need to add another post. In other cases it’s because there wasn’t enough interesting aspects to write a full post about. Whatever the reason, I’ve ended up with a bunch of photos that I would like to upload somewhere, but they don’t really fit on the blog. To remedy … Read the rest
It's been a couple of weeks since my last post about tourism in Germany during the Covid19 pandemic. Me and my colleagues spent most of those weekends exploring the southwestern part of Germany, checking out a lot of different sightseeing spots. To my surprise there was a fair amount of other tourists at several of the places we visited; except for the fact that museums were closed and we were limited to eating fastfood in the car, it didn't really feel like there was a lockdown. Granted, Germany was only doing lockdown light but in some places it felt so normal it almost made me question if there was any lockdown at all. Don't worry, I have not become a Covid denier, it's just that the overall experience has mostly been like normal, pandemic free tourism.
So, just like in my last post, I want to share some of the more worthwhile places with my readers, enjoy: read the rest
I’m here in Germany for business reasons but me and my colleagues still get the weekends off like normal, so we are able to go out sightseeing. There are of course some limitations due to Covid19, but so far they are comparatively mild and we’ve been able to visit a bunch of different tourist attractions. Some of them are really worth seeing so I thought I would share them here.
Schloss Lichtenstein
Germany is full of castles, if you do a search on Google Maps you’re bound to find at least ten in any given area. With that being the … Read the rest
As we all know, international travel isn’t possible with a global pandemic going on but domestic travel is still possible, at least here in Taiwan. We’ve been thinking of going back to Yilan and the secret beach for a while now and last weekend we decided to do it. Previous trips with the baby have either been day trips or trips back to Yinis parents house where we already have plenty of baby things. This was the first time staying overnight in hotel with the baby which was an entirely new experience for us but we decided to take on … Read the rest