an island of calm next to a very busy city. This place is famous for the giant Buddha statue sitting on top of the hill, which can be seen from all around.
It is a large mass of steel and concrete, of about 22 m of height, fairly modern (from 1961), which can be visited from the inside
up to some point.
I think it is up to the neck, but when we went up those stairs, the access was closed from the third or fourth floor. I don't quite like the windows that pop up at the sides or at the back, though.
Crossing past the open space behind the Buddah, there is a nice three-storey building, the big Buddha's temple, each floor apparently dedicated to a different kind of deities, or maybe beliefs, although they are very mixed in Taiwan.
We had an almost perfect afternoon when we visited the place. The warm Sun and the nice temperature increased the sensation of peace that spreads all over it (even if we could still hear the weak faraway humming of the city at the foot of the mountain). We did not wait until the Sun set, but we could still see the nice changing patterns of the shadows of the statue or the trees of the garden.
In front of the Buddha's sight, just at the edge of the hill, there is the Nine Dragons Pond, related to the history of Buddha. The nine dragons that bathed the just-born Sakyamuni.
We could even see the fountains working
All in all, I think I took far too many pictures
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