Taipei's Heights (part 1)

On Sunday a group of us decided to head out to the Maokong Gondola. It is part of Taipei's mass transit system and provides a spectacular view of the city. However, it closes inclement weather...which is often. If you're interested, here's a link to it's wiki page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maokong_Gondola

Here Amit and I are taking simultaneous selfies...didn't work so well

 We visited the Taipei Tea promotion center at the top of the mountain and were able to taste several variations of Taiwan's teas.

 There cups make my hands look huge

 We also had  a tour of the gardens behind the center.

We passed several tea plantations on the way back to the gondola. We learned that most quality tea is only made from the top 3 leaves of a tea plant. The rest is left alone.

 We hopped on a glass-bottomed gondola for the trip down. Somehow, we had a shorter wait by taking one of these. The glare off the bottom made it hard to get a good picture.

 We also passed over several rice plantations at lower elevations.

A few folks grabbed a fried squid snack at the bottom