Water's Edge -7M3

Imagine, night has just fallen; many people standing near water’s edge with little paper lanterns. The hand crafted lanterns lifted into the sky with candles inside to light their way. The candles seem to reflect on the water's surface; the reflection speaks of an older time, ages ago, when the ancestors of the lanterns did the same thing. As the lanterns lift into the crisp night air they take with them sadness, happiness, and memories of a year’s passing...We tried to go to Yilan for the last day of the lantern festival, but when we got to the train station we found out that our group left early; we did RSVP late. The lantern festival in Yilan is supposed to be breath taking and we missed it...DOH! Well not to worry. We decided to go to Yilan, but this trip was for the beach. The train ride take about 1.5 hrs, not to bad for a day basking the warm sunlight on soft sand. The landscape was beautiful and we passed through a lot of little towns. I'm not sure if the train stations were created because people lived there or did the people build little villages around where the train company decided to put stops...either way. At many of the stops, villagers stand at the open doors and peddle sack/box lunches. An old man sitting next to me got one, and it looked good; rice meat, some veggies. He ate it and enjoyed, although I'm not sure how he chewed with two teeth on opposite sides of his mouth. We got to the beach station and walked into a quite world, not much going on there for a beach town; ohh yeah it is winter here. So it was about 10 minute walk to the beach. We walked down an alley with a brigade on our left to stop typhoon waves, and cute houses on our right. The houses all had gardens in front of them with irrigation. You walk down like 10 stairs to the garden and backup them to the house, this was another form of protection should the water of the ocean get over the 15 ft wall of concrete. None the less each house had a small garden with mostly cabbage, bokchoy, lettuce and other winter greens, I guess. We walked through the yard of a school; a very beautiful school. From the front is was a concrete building, but it was U shaped with an open court yard in the rear with an ocean view, a large green field and a basketball court with 9.5 ft rims...hehehe made me feel good to jump up and grab it. We walked though an area of of buildings; some were restaurants, some were surf board rental stores, but they all were closed. When we got to the beach it was rocky. Correction, the beach was rocks, but there was about 20 feet of pebble sand. One of our group members was going to surf but decided not to as the waves were smallish. We walked back through the school, past the station, and into a small village to find lunch. Thank goodness we had a Taiwanese friend with us, because there was one restaurant, not menu's and no English. She ordered for us, we shared dishes in a family style and had a wonderful lunch. Went back to the rocks, ahem I mean beach for a little while and just appreciated the fresh air. Taipei is wonderful, but 1 in 5 people wear a smog mask, and its not just a fashion statement. All in all, this trip was a nice get away and cost next to nothing. BTW...we found out we got off one stop to early and the actual beach was just around the jetty and we never knew it! An excuse to go back! The title of this post is a good song by 7mary3.