Taipei Trip Part 5: Walking around Shifen Station on Pingxi Line

[Introduction]

I traveled to Taiwan for four days and three nights. This time, I visited Taipei and its surrounding areas. In this article, I will write about walking around Shifen station on the Pingxi Line as part of Day 2.

[Visit Places (series of articles)]
* Day 1: Flying to Taipei & Xiao Long Bao at Din Tai Fung
* Day 1: Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei, National Taiwan Museum and National Museum of History
* Day 1: Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall (Light-up)
* Day 2: Pingxi Line (Jingtong)
* Day 2: Pingxi Line (Shifen) [This article]
* Day 2: Pingxi Line (Houtong)
* Day 2: Jiufen
* Day 3: National Palace Museum
* Day 3: National Martyrs’ Shrine
* Day 3: Xinyi District
* Day 3: Taipei 101
* Day 4: 228 Peace Memorial Park, Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall, Longshan Temple and Ximending
* Day 4: Huashan 1914 Creative Park & Return to Home

[Travel Date]
2017.04.27-30

[Main Part]

Walking around Shifen

I took a return train from Jingtong station and reached Shifen station. I will stop over and walk around Shifen station.

Shifen is the largest town along Pingxi Line, so a lot of tourists got off the train here.

Pingxi Line is a single track railway and Shifen station is centrally located. So, up-trains and down-trains pass each other at Shifen station.

Now the up-train left the station.

Shifen is famous for sky lanterns.

A lantern was launched.

It is said dreams come true if the lantern go up straight.

There were several shops that handled sky lanterns and they were launched around here.

There were a lot of tourists around the station, but once I walked into an alley, I found it was relatively calm.

I returned to the crowded shopping area near the station.

Platform of Shifen station.

Trains ran once an hour. Visitors were able to walk into rails and launch sky lanterns as long as trains did not show up.

Another feature of Shfen along with sky lanterns is that visitors are able to watch trains just in front of them.

When trains came closer, shop staff blowed a whistle for warning so that visitors did not bother trains.

A train was waiting at the station, I took several train photos.

Now I will have a lunch. I stopped by a cafe.

In the cafe.

Here is what I ordered.

So far I have used a wide-angle lens (16-35mm) to take photos. From now on, I will change it with a middle ranged telephoto lens (90mm). To begin with, here are some photos of shopping district.

I found a cute dog.

Here are photos of sky lanterns.

Then, I switched to the wide-angle lens (16-35mm) to take photos of Jingan Suspension Bridge.

View of the station from the bridge.

Then, I rode a train to move to the next destination, Houtong.

[Closing]

That’s it for the article about walking around Shifen station on the Pingxi Line as part of Day 2.

To tell the truth, one of the biggest reasons why I decided to travel to Taipei is because I wanted to visit Shifen. When I just happned to read a guidebook of Taiwan, I was impressed with several photos of Shifen. Then, I determined to visit Taipei 🙂

In the next article, I will write about walking around Houtong station on the Pingxi Line as part of Day 2.

[Map]