1:25

With a little down time this weekend, our little family went on a little trip to nearby Taoyuan county to visit one of the most interesting little amusement parks I've ever seen. It's called, fittingly enough, 'Little People World' (小人國). The rides left much to be desired, but that didn't matter since Rainny can't really go on many of them anyway (she loved the carousel). Good thing Nicole's sister Mary came along to help us take care of the littl'n.

The sightseeing was well worth it. 小人國 is home to a huge collection of miniature scale models of famous landmarks from everywhere in the world. I was astonished to see the attention to detail in the models. Every model is scaled down at a 1:25 ratio from the actual size. Because I had never visited most of the actual places, the constant ratio thing helped me keep everything in perspective. The artists even went as far as counting bricks on cathedrals and castles to get the perfect look.

I took a plethora of photos, and only a portion of them are posted below. Sorry for the photo-intensive post. I hope your browser can forgive me.

obviously not the real Statue of Liberty

Washington Monument

Mount Rushmore, complete with trimmed mini-trees

St. Basil's

Rainny looks on as a helicopter gets ready to leave an aircraft carrier

A miniature amusement park, one of my favorite models

LongMen Buddhist Caves

The Great Wall

Nicole, Rainny, and Mary in front of the forbidden city

Pingtung Lighthouse, located in south Taiwan

a cool depiction of an industrial district in Taiwan

a port area

A tunnel for the model train that runs around the industrial models

A very busy port