This is our first down day when we don’t have to be anywhere at any specific time, so we take our time. The breakfast is delicious, though more Western than at our hotel in Kaohsiung. We discover that Megan likes strawberries. She also ate a little bit of egg. If she doesn’t want any more of something or doesn’t particularly care for it, she’ll spit it right back out at you. After our leisurely breakfast we return to the room to pack our things up for the day. We then head out for the Palace Museum which houses all the wonderful antiquities Chiang Kai-shek stole from mainland China when he came to Taiwan. Our taxi driver is very friendly and is the most well traveled taxi driver we have ever met. He tells us he has traveled to more than 40 countries including several trips to the US and Canada. He has probably seen more of the US than I have.
At the museum, the porcelain impresses us the most. The pieces are so beautiful and so artistic and so incredibly old, some dating back to the 5th century. The museum is extremely crowded with tour groups arriving one after another. It seems that the majority of them are from mainland China. We do our best to dart to the pieces when there is a brief pause between groups before being engulfed by them.
After leaving the museum we go to 101 which is the tallest building in Taiwan and one of the tallest in the world. There are 101 floors plus 5 underground, .and as of March 2009 claims the title of the tallest building in the world, “as international architectural standards define a "building" as a structure capable of being fully occupied.” It will lose this distinction to a building in Dubai later this year. We didn’t go to the observation desk, though we did see the long line for it. The lower floors are one large shopping mall with some very exclusive stores. The vast majority are the same ones you can find in the US, so we head to the 5th floor where there are a couple of stores selling art glass from Taiwanese artists. The store which has the most beautiful items is the Liuligong Fang Gallery. My mother had purchased a few items from this artist during her trip to China in November, but the artist is Taiwanese. This artist has a couple of other galleries nearby within different department stores, so we wait to make any purchases as we are told that the different stores carry different items.
We then head for the 5th floor where there is a wide selection of restaurants. We eat at a Chinese restaurant where the food is again delicious. I have shrimp with exotic seaweed, and my mother has beef with bamboo. All of us including Megan eat rice with green vegetables. You certainly can’t go hungry here. The food everywhere we have eaten has been wonderful and has ranged from dirt cheap to relatively inexpensive. As we try to make our way out of 101 after dinner, we accidently end up on B1 which is where the food market and food court are located. Had we known there was a food court, we probably would have headed here first. We walk around, and each restaurant in the food court looks more delicious than the next. This is not your average mall food court in the States. We enjoy walking through the food market and see many familiar US brands in Chinese packaging as well as many products from Japan.
At the museum, the porcelain impresses us the most. The pieces are so beautiful and so artistic and so incredibly old, some dating back to the 5th century. The museum is extremely crowded with tour groups arriving one after another. It seems that the majority of them are from mainland China. We do our best to dart to the pieces when there is a brief pause between groups before being engulfed by them.
After leaving the museum we go to 101 which is the tallest building in Taiwan and one of the tallest in the world. There are 101 floors plus 5 underground, .and as of March 2009 claims the title of the tallest building in the world, “as international architectural standards define a "building" as a structure capable of being fully occupied.” It will lose this distinction to a building in Dubai later this year. We didn’t go to the observation desk, though we did see the long line for it. The lower floors are one large shopping mall with some very exclusive stores. The vast majority are the same ones you can find in the US, so we head to the 5th floor where there are a couple of stores selling art glass from Taiwanese artists. The store which has the most beautiful items is the Liuligong Fang Gallery. My mother had purchased a few items from this artist during her trip to China in November, but the artist is Taiwanese. This artist has a couple of other galleries nearby within different department stores, so we wait to make any purchases as we are told that the different stores carry different items.
We then head for the 5th floor where there is a wide selection of restaurants. We eat at a Chinese restaurant where the food is again delicious. I have shrimp with exotic seaweed, and my mother has beef with bamboo. All of us including Megan eat rice with green vegetables. You certainly can’t go hungry here. The food everywhere we have eaten has been wonderful and has ranged from dirt cheap to relatively inexpensive. As we try to make our way out of 101 after dinner, we accidently end up on B1 which is where the food market and food court are located. Had we known there was a food court, we probably would have headed here first. We walk around, and each restaurant in the food court looks more delicious than the next. This is not your average mall food court in the States. We enjoy walking through the food market and see many familiar US brands in Chinese packaging as well as many products from Japan.
We walk back to the hotel which is about 2 blocks away and get ready for bed. We figured Megan would go right to sleep after such a busy day, but she had other ideas. She wasn’t the least bit interested in sleeping. She kept crawling around her crib, standing up, throwing her toys out and then looking at us to see if we would pick them up for her (which of course we did) and babbling away in whichever language she is speaking. Finally, around 11:00, she decides she is tired enough to go to sleep. Exhausted, we fall asleep minutes later. Tomorrow, we head for AIT (US embassy equivalent) for Megan’s visa appointment.
Again I have to say this... Thank you so much for sharing such a wonderful moment with us!! Please keep the posts coming and best wishes for a safe and speedy return home.
ReplyDeleteBy the way - my son Jacob loves strawberries too. At 14 months he would happily eat a pound of strawberries for every meal if only we would let him!