Taiwan Tea Trip Day 1

Recently I was blessed with the opportunity to tour the tea fields and factories of Japan and Taiwan. Through my blog, I want to take you on my tea journey. Each country has its own feel, food, tea, and people and I enjoyed both equally well. Oh how I wish the computer offered you the chance to smell the wonderful food and tea of these countries.For now, however the best I can do is try to describe my senses through my words.

Well after a grueling 22 hour flight plus wait times in Atlanta and San Francisco, I finally reached Taiwan! I landed at 6 a.m. Taiwan time.  I crossed over the International Date Line so that meant I jumped ahead 12 hours missing a whole half a day. With just a few hours sleep on the plane, my roommate Lynayn and I decided to shower and hit the streets to acclimate to our new 12 hour time change!

Taiwan is a beautiful country full of friendly people.  I had a couple free days before our Tea Study Tour 2010 started. Our hotel was in the historic tea district of Taipei.  Immediately I sensed I was in a foreign country with all kinds of new sights and smells.

This part of the city is full of tea shops, street markets, and bustling with what seems like more scooters than cars!

Temples are in abundance there and are built with ornate, colorful designs reflecting the ancient heritage of this proud land.

The street food was interesting as well and the smells were almost intoxicating!

 

Some smells we savory while others were sweet. Still others I could not identify and were as mysterious to me as the Orient itself.

Our first day ended with all the excitment and enthusiam that our physical exhaustion would allow. But for now we are off to the hotel for some much needed rest.

In the next blog is Day 2, when we visited an interesting tea house which was a mixture of Taiwanese and Japanese style of taking tea.

Happy Sipping and thinking of Taiwan, Lisa