松濤園 @ 中興新村

#2025-0610

Last Saturday, after Jean and I visited our friend Lao Ye’s ink painting exhibition, we went to Zhongxing New Village (中興新村) to enjoy the lotus flowers. Afterwards, we had lunch at a restaurant called Pine-Waves Garden (松濤園), about a hundred meters from the village entrance.

It’s a charming countryside restaurant — not very large, but surrounded by various trees and flowers. There are also two or three ponds, each with beautiful fountains spraying water either around or in the middle.

Next to the restaurant’s large windows, a lovely pond is specially equipped with devices that produce tiny water droplets, creating a misty effect as if thick mists and fog were swirling about. What a fantastic scene to watch! The delightful water vapor, combined with the air-conditioning inside, made the hot June day feel comfortably cool from within the restaurant.

Before going in, Jean and I were captivated by the trees and flowers in the front garden. As we approached the entrance, we saw a well-printed menu displayed on one side of the doorway, showing the main dishes and their prices. I noticed the prices were quite high, ranging from NT$780 to NT$1450. The cheapest dishes started at NT$780. Should we go in and have lunch?

“To be in or out, that’s the question!”

But in the end, we decided to enter this extraordinary restaurant. Both Jean and I would have felt embarrassed to turn away after seeing the menu — thinking about our ages, mine 71 and hers 68, and how hard we’ve worked in our lives. In recent years, some good friends of ours, also retired, have taken many chances to travel abroad and enjoy themselves much more than we have. We rarely spend time or money traveling far for ourselves; most of our trips are to visit our children, grandchildren, and Jean’s elderly mother...

“Let’s treat ourselves to a fancy meal today!” I said, it being around noon last Saturday.

“Why not?” Jean replied. “Now that we’re here, it would be too stingy to just turn around and go back!”

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相關文章 (See also)：

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2)  The Countryside (田園風光)     (2019)

3)  Meeting the Ye Family Again     (2025)

4)  Countryside Views in Dajia Today     (2025)

5)  Tokyo Disneyland (東京迪士尼樂園)     (2023)