Yilan Hot Springs
Since Chinese New Year is next week, we wanted to take a day trip before traffic around Taipei picked up. We decided to visit Yilan (pronounced Ee-Lan), a popular family friendly county about an hour away from Taipei. It is not very easy to get to, so most visitors are local Taiwanese families.
After a long bus ride from Daan where we live, we arrived in Yilan. We checked into our hotel room and were delighted to find free snacks and drinks. After unloading our bags, we decided to hit the hot springs. Because we were hotel guests, we got free entry to the hotel hot spring facility. It is also possible to use the hot springs even if you are not staying the hotel for a small fee, but you have to bring your own slippers, swim cap, bathing suit and towels.
The hot spring facility had about 20 different soaking pools! The first pool we visited was filled with warm water and tons of small fish. Most of them looked like your average gold fish, but about 30% were dark or silver colored. It was quite shallow, meant for sitting on the side or on some rocks in the middle. When you put your feet in, the fish immediately swim over and start eating away at any dead or dry skin. It tickled soooooo much! This was my favorite pool. We liked it so much that we went to a similar fish/foot soaking place the following day while waiting for our train.
After the fish, we explored some other flavored pools, including wine, bubblegum, aloe, milk, and many more. All of them were the color of the food/thing they were named after. I was convinced that they were just dyed because they had no scent. But then, while Ansel and I were sitting in the wine pool, the staff came over and poured in a bottle of wine. 😱
Next we headed over to the kid area. There was a very wide waterslide that could fit up to 3 people across. It was awesome! There were also a number of mounted water guns that you could aim at the people who came down the water slide. We definitely got a few surprised looks from folks coming down the slide...
One of Mom's favorite pools was the biggest and deepest. Charlotte could still touch, but barely. It was a half moon shape with a lot of bubbles and jets. Also it had a section with more than ten individual shower/ massage stations. Each station had a button that would unleash a strong waterfall of warm water from overhead. A couple times, Mom was hanging out underneath one chatting with us, when Ansel or Charlotte would sneak up and push the button. Down came a thundering stream of water on top of her! Lucky for her, the water was warm.
When we were ready to leave the hot springs, we took showers and headed out to ramen. The ramen restaurant had tasty food and (bonus!) there were two resident cats who were so cute. After dinner, we headed back to the hotel for bed.
For part 2, read The Animal farm (Natalie)
Oh, wow this place looks awesome! So sorry I missed it. Will you all take me there when I get back from the US???
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