Maokong Gondola

I am awaiting confirmation of flights for the kids and I to return to the states. It is going to happen quickly, like, any day now. This confuses people because I say I'm leaving then staying then flying home, etc. I believe we will be living here, and so we must get home quickly to get the house packed up. School begins here in early August. Of course, we don't have confirmation that there are spots available for the kids at the school, but, details, details... I believe we will be flying to Boise rather than Virginia. The most recent plan has been that I would get to visit my Mom again, then head to Virginia to pack up. However Mom is, once again, in tough shape so I am not sure if I'll see her or not. In any case, I want to be there as soon as possible.

Having said all of that, I am trying to sort of catch up on posting some pictures from our recent excursions. Today I will show some of our trip on the Maokong Gondola.

I thought I would hate it, because I'm terribly afraid of heights. I HATED the Ferris wheel, and this is much higher so I was hoping I would survive. In fact, I was quite calm and very much enjoyed the ride. Except when Ethan started "what if-ing", as in "What if someone took a huge sword and sliced the cable?" and similar scenarios. I had to make him stop.

Here is our gondola:

A partial view of the city of Taipei. It goes forever.

A BIT of a feel for our route:

Looking down. Once you get past the crush of the city, everything seems like jungle. I was on the lookout for monkeys or parrots, but didn't see anything. I know there are monkeys, but I don't know about parrots. I have no idea if the live here.

I don't understand why so many people live on top of each other in the city, when there are areas like this:

A little difficult to get to, I suppose!

This next house is quite high up the mountain, very remote. I don't know if it's a farm or just a self-sustaining property. My guess would be the latter.

Once we arrived in Maokong we began strolling past the cafes and tea shops. I spotted some pretty flower boxes.


One of the pleasant cafes:

We were there on a weekday. I imagine on the weekend this place is bustling with activity. I prefer it this way.

We strolled past a couple of nice houses. Here is one. There was an even nicer one behind it.

Part of an outdoor cafe. Don't you just want to sit and sip tea?

There were several interesting gates and pathways along our walk.


As is our style, we just headed straight to the gondola without researching what normal people do. I believe they hike up or down part of the mountain - from one gondola stop to another. We weren't prepared so just strolled for awhile, had lunch (sort of - that was the earlier post!) and returned to the same gondola station.

We will add this to the list of things we want to do again, and better. But it was a wonderful experience, probably the most peaceful thing I've done in Taiwan.