At the Olive Tree Minsu, we had a quad room plus an additional bed for our family of 5 and a twin room for my parents.  We were allocated the ground floor quad room and a third floor double room. The spiral staircase was inconvenient for my parents. I was scolding myself for not requesting for a ground floor room for my parents at booking.  But luckily the minsu owner and my boys helped bring my parents’ bags up.  So if you are travelling with young kids or old folks remember to tell them that you do not want the 3rd floor rooms that are just accessible by a spiral stairs.

I must say that though my parent’s room was inconvenient for old folks, it was pretty. It even came with a balcony and roof top terrace. Great for star gazing. Our ground floor room had 2 double beds and a single bed placed side by side. Both rooms had quaint country deco which I really like. Only complaint was that there was no hook in the bathroom for hanging our clothes, so very inconvenient. There was no housekeeping for our 2 nights stay. They just asked if we wanted them to take out our garbage and change our towels. We asked for it, but unfortunately, they gave us only 4 instead of 5 towels on our second night. We were too lazy to go get them to send another, so made do with the 4.

Anyway, we woke up to a beautiful morning at The Olive Tree.  It was great to wake up to nothing but nature all around us.

Morning @ The Olive Tree

Breakfast was simple but healthy.  We had a choice of different thick toast, eg garlic, chocolate, peanut butter.  We all loved the garlic toast.  Besides thick toast, each breakfast plate came with salad, eggs, sweet potato and chicken nuggets.  We had a choice of hot or cold beverages too.  Btw, they serve the same breakfast everyday.  It was probably OK for most guests who only stay for a night.  We only noticed it as we stayed 2 nights.

Breakfast @ 南庄橄榄树 The Olive Tree

Penglaixi was closed after damage by the summer typhoon. So instead we visited xiangtianhu (Xiangtian Lake) and shenxiangu (Immortal Fairy Valley). Pretty ecological parks, not big but nice leisurely walks.

Xiangtian Lake

Immortal Fairy Valley

Then we went to Nanzhuang old town.  An interesting street to browse was the osmanthus lane which had interesting and quaint shops. This place was crowded with mainly locals. We were there on a Sunday. Bought the fermented bean paste bean curds, black sugar ginger tea, mei cai ( preserved vegetables) etc. cheap and good.

Osmanthus Lane, Nanzhuang Old Town

After lunch at Nanzhuang, we went to Lavender Cottage at Mingde.  We had originally wanted to visit Lavender Cottage at Sinshe but changed our plans as we decided not to detour to Sinshe and prefer to spend more time in Taichung, so we came here instead.

Lavender Cottage, Mingde had a large and beautiful garden with a lake. A peaceful day to spend some quiet time by the lake if you so desire. Unfortunately, the lavender were not in bloom when we visited. So we didn’ see much lavenders in bloom.  There were some small pockets of flowers around, but nothing spectacular. The garden had many photo opportunities. A pretty place to take pictures.

We did not do any DIY. But for those interested, there were woodwork DIYs available. We had a light afternoon tea at the restaurant. We ordered some drinks and cakes and ice cream. The entry tickets could be used to offset the cost of food in the restaurant.   It can also be offset against purchases from the gift shop.

Overall it was a pleasant park and a good venue for an afternoon tea, but nothing spectacular.

Lavender Cottage, Mingde (Miaoli)

We decided to go back to the Olive Tree for dinner.  The Olive Tree operates a cafe during the day as well for day visitors, but they close early on weekends.  So we called to order our food so that they will be ready when we get back.  We had already made this arrangement with them in the morning before we came out.

They offered various meals sets, eg rosemary chicken, butter chicken, Thai style chicken, Korean pork, beef curry and a vegetarian option. We tried the butter chicken, Rosemary chicken, Thai chicken and Korean pork among the 7 of us. Only DH didn’t like his Korean pork. The rest of us enjoyed our dinner. Set dinner was about NTD380 per set.  Expensive by Taiwanese standard but I thought it was still reasonable. Each dinner set came with a choice of cold or hot drinks.  It was simple food enjoyed in a cosy family environment, like having dinner at home.

Dinner @ 南庄橄榄树 The Olive Tree

This minsu was lovely. You will like it if you like country style deco and style. It was really cozy and pretty. We enjoyed our stay and meals. I would recommend this as a base to explore Nanzhuang. 2 nights was ok for us because we arrived late on day one and wanted another day to enjoy the Minsu.  Otherwise we noticed that most guests stay 1 night only.

The post Taiwan Road Trip, Day 2 (Nanzhuang, Miaoli) appeared first on Mums Travels.

This morning, we headed south to Dahu township in southern part of Miaoli which is well known for its strawberries. December was the start of the strawberry harvesting season so we went to pick strawberries. The strawberries here were of a small variety and also because it was still early in the season.  There were many strawberry farms along the road and you just pick whichever that fancy you.

Pick your own strawberries @ Dahu

Then we went to see Longteng broken bridge which was damaged by earthquake.  You can still see the beautiful structure of the bridge.  This railway bridge served the Shengxing railway station which is now abandoned. It was the highest altitude railway station in Taiwan in its time.  We went there too.  The rustic place provided many nice photo ops.

Long Teng Broken Bridge

We went to Chateau in the Air, a restaurant in the mountains for lunch.  It was quite busy for a weekday.   The restaurant was in a pretty European style chateau. You pay NTD200 per person, including kids aged 7 and above, to enter the compound but you can offset this from your restaurant bill.  I suppose it was to deter those not intending to dine at the restaurant from crowding the place.

Chateau in the Air

Set lunches range for steaks to seafood. Each set came with soup, appetizer, dessert and a drink of choice. It is not cheap will sets ranging from NTD500+ to NTD900+ for the most expensive sirloin steak. I had the sirloin and must say that it was nicely done. I asked for medium rare and it came out just right. We all had steak (sirloin and ribeye) except my mum who had the seafood platter. She said that it was delicious too.

Lunch @ 天空之城 Chateau in the Air

After lunch we took a walk around the chateau which had lots of photo ops. All in all an enjoyable meal in a pretty setting.

One negative here was the inexperienced waiters. Once they spilled a whole glass of ice water on my son, and another time dropped a knife that could have hurt someone. They were apologetic but did no  other service recovery. Most expensive restaurants would have offered a free drink or dessert for example. But none here. Maybe they just had a bad day.

After lunch we headed for our minsu, Joye House (or Zhuoye House, Zhuoye Cottage), 卓也小屋. Joye is built in a village type style and had an indigo dying DIY activity. We had book ourselves for the afternoon session.

Indigo Dye DIY activity at Joye House

At the Indigo Dye DIY activity, we were taught how to create designs for the items we chose and then how to dye the items to the shade of our desire. You can choose to dye drawstring bags, tshirts, shorts, scarves etc.  It was a fun activity for both young and old and our completed creation was a good souvenir of our visit too.

Joye House had 2 room types. Barn Room or vip room.  We chose the barn rooms as coming from the city, we wanted a rustic flavor.  We had a quad +1 and a double room. The sleeping area of our barn rooms were the silos of the barn. Very cute. The 4 pax room had a loft with a double bed and another double on the ground floor. The extra bed was placed in the loft. The beds were actually just mattresses. The rooms were set next to the pond which had ducks and geese.  A very pretty sight.  But alas! when night falls! Never did I know geese could be so noisy! If you need absolute quiet, then never stay in the barn rooms, that’s my advice.  Better get the VIP rooms. The price of the barn and VIP rooms were the same when we checked. We chose the barn rooms because we wanted something different. But the geese were really loud so some of us did not sleep too well that night.  Others didn’t even notice any sound!

Barn Room @ 卓也小屋 Joye House

This was a lovely place to stay a night and do the indigo dye. Oh, by the way this place serves vegetarian food only. We had a set vegetarian dinner which came with hot pot. Breakfast was Taiwanese porridge with vegetarian dishes. It was definitely an experience for my carnivorous kids.   I enjoyed breakfast, but thought that dinner was so so, but that is probably because I am a meat person too

Our vegeterian set dinner @ Joye House

The restaurant and gift shop @ Joye House at night.

All in all, we enjoyed our stay at Joye House despite the noisy geese. It was well worth a one night stay to experience an old Taiwanese village and the DIY Indigo Dye. I won’t stay more than one night as, firstly, I can’t take vegetarian food only for more than 2 meals and secondly, there was little else one can do there.

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