On July 5th, we left Shifen and headed further south along the east coast to King Car Orchid Park.  The owners of King Car also own Mr. Brown Coffee, so when we arrived there we went into the lower eating area of a large Mr. Brown Coffee shop.  After waiting for some technical difficulties to be resolved, our guest lecturer, Mr. Alex Chang, spoke about orchid cultivation and the orchid industry in Taiwan.  After the lecture, we toured the orchid greenhouses, which were gorgeous.

The coffee house.  It reminded me of a southern plantation in the US.

In one of the greenhouses they also had a bunch of cacti and other cutsie potted plants that they sell.

After the greenhouse tour, we went back to the coffee shop for lunch.  The food was pretty good, and a bit more western in style.  I had a pork chop in a rosemary sauce that was good, with white rice and egg drop soup (still in Asia), a couple pieces of broccoli, and three cold, pale French fries (I didn't take more than a bite of one because it seemed like they had been baked and then stored in the fridge and not heated back up).  From upstairs at the coffee shop bar, Corinne and I each bought a piece of chocolate cake for NT$50 (so like $1.50 US).  It. was. de-li-cious.  I had missed chocolate.

When we were finished with lunch, we hopped back on the bus and drove to Cingshui Cliff, which was basically a rocky beach at the bottom of a thousand foot mountain.  It was so pretty.  We waded in the surf and looked at all of the colorful rocks.  They were hard to walk on, but it was still really fun.  The waves were huge, and we got our shorts wet a couple of times by some rollers that came in higher than excpected.  Tracy, one of the boys from China, was trying to jump over the waves, and he ended up soaked from head to toe.  We spent about an hour there before moving on toward our hotel for the night in Hualian.  

Shortly after arriving at the hotel, we ate another round table dinner.  However, the quality wasn't quite as good as some of the other dinners that we had.  One of the dishes was some kind of kidney.  I tried it, but it was pretty strange, and it was served cold. Not my cup off tea.  In the evening, most of the group went to a sweet shop in downtown Hualian famous for it mochi.  Mochi is a gooey, sweet sort of thing that is made into balls filled with lots of different things and coated in powdered sugar.  I had the peanut flavor, which was filled with the same peanut powder that was in the delicious ice cream burrito in Jiufen.  I thought it was really tasty. :)

After eating mochi, the group wanted to go to the night market in Hualian.  Someone had said/thought it was a fifteen minute walk to get there.  We walked for thirty minutes and still hadn't gotten there yet when several of us decided it wasn't worth it headed back to the hotel.  I was stuffed and couldn't have eaten more food anyhow.  Note to self...pass on the night market wild goose chases in the future.