Another new country and a simple excursion. Except it was 96 degrees and very high humidity. You would think I would get used to that, but I don’t.
Our first stop in the city was at a building named Taipei 101. It has 101 stories and was the World’s tallest building when it was completed in 2004. It was actually designed to have 111 stories but they either ran out of money or time. Soon it wasn’t any longer the tallest. But it interesting architecture.
Of course there is a large shopping mall on the lower floors but only for really exclusive shops like Yves Saint Laurent. We bought nothing.
I did find it interesting how many rental bikes there are. There are also as many motor bikes. The streets are very crowded. But they do seem to follow traffic laws unlike Vietnam.
Then we stopped at the national Liberty Square which ahs the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial, the National Theater and National Concert Hall. Every hour they change the guard at the Memorial so we watched it.
This is from the steps as we were leaving the memorial. The concert hall and theater are on each side (I don’t remember which is which). But the gardens were perfectly manicured. We almost had a blue sky. The first one in many days.
Our last stop on this excursion was at the National Revolutionary Martyrs’ Shrine. Another set of beautiful traditional Oriental architecture and another changing of the guard.
During our excursion the guide didn’t give very good directions so we almost lost 3 people. So she had to run around the memorial and find missing people. She got really hot while we sat on the air conditioned bus.
It is a very clean city so we did enjoy it.
Johnson's Travel 