陽明山國家公園 (Yangmingshan National Park)

陽明山國家公園 Yangmingshan National Park
1-20 Chu Tzu Hu Road, Taipei 112, Taiwan
886 (2) 2861-5404

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My mom rented a van that day in order for us to go to Yangmingshan National Park & Jinshan.  We went first to Yangmingshan National Park, 1st impression?  The place is huge!!

We stopped over first at the 小油坑 (Siaoyukeng).  Located at northwestern part of the park, this has the largest sulphur steam vents.

The sulphur vents spew gases and the odor is pungent, very pungent!  Here is a preview of what you can see in the place.

The scenery is really lovely.  And we climbed up to the top where the highway is located, about 800 meters long.  Whew!  We were already very tired after that.  In the picture below, that is a preview of the stairs that we climbed in order to reach the top.

If you’re planning to go to Yangmingshan National Park, be ready for a hike! 🙂

When we reached the top, it already started raining.  We still went ahead and toured the rest of the tourist spots at the park.  We were already there so might as well continue even if we’d be soaking wet w/c was what happened hehehe 😛

Next stop is the National Park itself.  Since it was September, flower festival has already ended (the event runs from November to April).  Still the park is a beautiful sight.

To share the history, Yangmingshan was called Grass Mountain during Japanese occupation of Taiwan, since it was covered in grass and seldom visited by the people.  After world war II, 國民黨 (Kuo Min Tang) renamed it to Yangmingshan and created the park.

We walked around and spotted waterfalls, flowers & 辛亥光復樓 (Xinhai Guangfu building).  The building, located at the center of the park, is one of the popular spots in the park where people hang around.  It has a coffee shop & gift shop on the 1st floor & art exhibit on the 2nd floor & coffee shop at the 3rd floor.

We also found fish ponds surrounding the building.  I took a video of the fish pond and also took a video of the duck that we saw, soooooo cute!!

Other sights to see in the park are the ff.:

• 陽明山花鐘 (Flower Clock) – large clock that is made of 15,000 flower pots!  Something that we should take a picture of.  Surrounded by Taiwan flowering cherrie, Japanese flowering cherrie, camellia, etc.

• Statue of Late President 蔣中正 (Chiang Kai Shek) – Yangmingshan is a summer residence of the late president.  It was he who renamed the place to Yangmingshan in honor of çŽ‹é˜³æ˜Ž Wang Yang Ming.

• Statue of 王阳明 (Wang Yang Ming) – is a Ming Dynasty famous chinese scholar & military official of the 17th century

More pictures from the park here.

P.S. This is where my aunt lost her 1,000USD watch (she removed it and put it in her pocket coz it was raining hard but it fell accidentally) and where I damaged my phone due to heavy rains. We were soaking wet when we went back to the van. Still had a great time, we just didn’t anticipate the heavy rains.