I took a lot of photos over the past week and a lot of them have been making good wallpapers on my devices since then.
(Maybe not the thumbnail one, though. That one’s just cute).
In order to share the love with others a little bit, I wanted to post some of those pictures here like a wallpaper collection.
It really is a “beautiful island”. Some of these are repeats from past posts — this is just a compilation.
This is downtown Chiayi, a totally underrated city and a decent crossroads between urban environment with landmarks and country town without too many other tourists (at least, not American ones).
Some parts of Taiwan really do look like America. This is a pretty colorful photo, though.
中正紀念堂！This is one of those works where you really need to separate the art from the meaning.
Jiufen is a neat town with a cool old street, and it’s got some nice mountain views. Actually, it seems like most of 新北 New Taipei City looks like this.
Usually, Taiwanese street names are pretty predictable. One that seems fairly common is 介壽 Jieshou, “long, sturdy life” and a play on Chiang Kai-shek’s name in Mandarin (蔣介石 Jiang Jie-shi). I think today’s 凱達格蘭 Kai-da-ge-lan Boulevard (named for local indigines) is Taipei’s former Jieshou Boulevard. The Japanese architecture at the Presidential office, though, is pretty striking.
The Alishan railway is pretty much the most famous tourist attraction around Chiayi, to my knowledge (other than the many turkey rice establishments).
This was inside of an office building for a company we shadowed. Again, very colorful! Looks cool.
This is a view of lower Taipei from the 貓空 Maokong gondola in Wenshan (technically part of the MRT, apparently). On an Apple laptop, the sun rays line right up with the notch, which is pretty classy (I have a Macbook Air).
This is from a conference room in the same office building for the company we shadowed. This is in Xinyi District (the part of Taipei that looks like America in a lot of places). This looks almost like Manhattan. The building in the center is the Taipei Dome (known in Mandarin as the “大巨蛋”, “big giant egg”, which I love).
This is the same nice shot that I got from 野柳 Yehliu Geopark. I posted it last weekend, but I wanted to put it up again because scenes like this are exactly how Taiwan got the name “Ilha Formosa/Beautiful Island/美麗島”. It really is.
All of these shots came from my iPhone SE 3, not a bad phone, but not one known for its incredible camera. It wasn’t me or the phone that made these look good — it was just the stunning number of epic landscapes. Seriously. It’s a beautiful place.
I hope you enjoy!