June 20, 2013 ---- I flipped through my Lonely Planet book about Taiwan and found that Pinglin 坪林 is quite interesting. It has the biggest tea museum in Taiwan and a scenic bike route to see some tea gardens. There is also a direct bus (#923) from Xindian MRT Station to Pinglin, which was very convenient for us since we lived right at the bus station.
We got to Pinglin around lunch time and walked around Pinglin Old Street searching for restaurants. There were many places selling local food, and the specialties tend to have tea as one of the ingredients. Pinglin is famous for tea, so there are many tea shops everywhere. However, we tried a cup of tea we got from the shop in the famous Tea Museum and didn't really like it, so I just got a Tea farmer hat as a souvenir instead.
After lunch, we walked to the world's largest tea museum, the Pinglin Tea Museum 坪林茶業博物館. I learned about different types of tea and the process of fermenting tea leaves. It was quite a nice museum, not too big and informative. In the museum, there was a tea shop where you can try some local tea in both hot and cold drink. I found it too bitter and didn't like it at all. It might just be either the kind we ordered or the shop didn't make it in a traditional way. If you go tea tasting in a traditional tea shop on the Old Street, you might have a better tea there.
From the tea museum, we walked along the river to 合歡露營度假山莊 where we could rent a bike. It was a little far from the museum, though. If you can rent a bike somewhere else in town, you should go for it. After getting the bikes, we rode back passing the museum and continued on Beiyi Road 背宜公路 and later turned down hill and crossed the Dalin Bridge. We biked on the long, windy Yuku Road 魚堀路, up and down on the hills until we reached 金溪茶園營地-金溪露營區. From there we just biked along the beautiful river all the way back to Pinglin Town. The total distance was 11.32 miles, and we took almost 3 hours because I stopped a lot to take photos. Here is the link to my route: http://www.mapmyrun.com/workout/307301713
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| Pinglin Tea Museum 坪林茶業博物館 |
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| Pinglin Tea Museum 坪林茶業博物館 |
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| Pinglin Tea Museum 坪林茶業博物館 |
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| Pinglin Tea Museum 坪林茶業博物館 |
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| Pinglin Tea Gardens |
Biking in Pinglin
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| catching the last bus home... |
