We had very special tour guides today for Taipei: Oliver, Carole & Liberty Hsiung. George approved the hiring of Oliver for an IT support position for his company in Taiwan years ago. They recently connected on facebook, so, we made arrangements to meet them. We had a lovely family day as you can see. So special for us.
We first went to another beautiful temple, and it was a very busy place this Saturday. We got our incense fix as the air was thick as the hordes of worshippers prayed and offered burning incense. There was also a nearby open market that we walked through and sampled free goodies.
Then, off to the Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall which was a huge complex covering hundreds of acres. They don’t do anything small in these parts. There is a large plaza connecting the Concert Hall, the Theater and the CKS Memorial, and they were preparing for a huge military themed festival with a huge concert size bandstand. We think they were expecting many 100’s of people to attend.
After lunch we went to Taipei 101, a 101 story landmark building, currently second to Dubai’s 160 story Burj Khalifa. We tried to go up but too foggy so we admired it from ground level and went for lattes at Starbucks. Liberty loved the foam-she was so cute!
Final stop was the National Palace Museum, containing 650,000+ Chinese ancient artifacts, and we only saw a few highlights. Again another huge facility and so impressive. Then back to the Quest and a sweet good-bye to Oliver, Carole and Liberty. They made our day so special, enjoyable and memorable. A heartfelt thanks!
