An Adventure to be remembered

Jen and Micah told me that I should post, so I will post about my adventure on Saturday. After the beautiful Yang Ming Mountain trip in the morning, Dr. C. said that he would be taking the MRT to the end of the line, to Danshui. Many nurses had mentioned that we should go there and it sounded like fun, so I jumped at the chance to join this adventure. Turns out that no one else was interested, so we headed out on our own. The town of Danshui is located along the Danshui River and stretches along the river until the river reaches the ocean. My first thought when arriving was that it reminded me of Seattle. We stopped at Starbucks for a quick drink before wandering along the wharf. The weather was cool and a little bit rainy. There were many shops to look in, and we were entertained by various people playing their instruments for a bit of cash. We managed to figure out that there was a ferry boat that went across the river and also up to the mouth of the river. We were hoping to cross the river, but instead ended up taking the ferry up to the mouth of the river, where it met the ocean. The ferry is much smaller than Seattle ferries, so it could go a lot faster. It was a fun ride. Then we decided to jump on a bus and stopped at the San Domingo fort (about halfway to the MRT station). We explored the fort which was most recently used as the British consulate. Lots of history, lots of interesting information. Besides the fort we saw a neat church and wandered up to see it. Turns out that it was on a university campus, so we wandered across the campus. Up to this point, I thoroughly enjoyed my adventure. I did not realize that I was about to get a lot more adventure than I had planned for. Instead of backtracking through the campus and back to the bus route, we made the choice to keep walking from where we were. Dr. C. made the logical assumption, that if we just headed downhill, we would make it back to the waterfront. So we turned left... down the hill... Not too long after that, we were suddenly going uphill again. At this point it was starting to get dark, so I lost any sense of direction that I had before. And it was still rainy. We wandered and made turns for quite a bit. Then, we found a large hill to trek down (hopefully leading us to water). Unfortunately, the path was through a construction area, so it was a bit dirty. About halfway down this long hill, we realized that we were getting further from civilization and decided that we really should head back up the hill. SO we did. Finally I noticed a sign pointing toward Danshui, so we headed that direction. And since we had been wandering for about an hour by now, we stopped at a real estate agency to ask for directions. We pulled out our map (for the first time, though this map had been with us the entire time). They were very kind to us and very helpful, though there English was not great, so their directions were lost on us. A lovely employee brought us out to the bus stop and told us that it would take us to MRT. Right before the bus came, she ran out again and said that we should be on the other side instead. Good thing she caught us in time! So we waited for the next bus (in the rain) and took it to the end of the line, hoping for the MRT station. Unfortunately, we ended up at the bus station instead. Our bus driver realized what had happened and helped us find a bus that would take us the other direction to the MRT. After a quick 5-10 minute ride we FINALLY ended back at the MRT station. We were probably closer than we thought, but just couldn't get it figured out. SO that's the end of my story. Though the adventure was more than I expected, and my jeans got a little muddy, and my feet got tired, I really had a fun time! A memory that I will never forget.