Taiwan - 2nd Day

---

Blog 13_Japan_2023



April 2 Port of Call: Keelung (Taipei), Taiwan – Weather: Partly Cloudy in the morning giving way to brilliant sunshine in the afternoon. Temperature: 74°F/22°C – wind: 10 mph.



Overnight the ship rounded the island and entered the harbour at Keelung, which serves

as the port for Taipei, the nation’s capital.

Our excursion for the day: “The Best of Taipei” is designed as another full day (8 hours)

adventure. It being the second day of the nation’s national “Spring Break” holiday traffic during

the morning in Taipei was light allowing us on our first stop at the famous “101 Building”

to get out to take some photographs without being crowded out by either traffic or pedestrians. The “101 Building” was for a short period of time one of the tallest buildings in the Orient.

The next site was an inner-city temple, known as Banga Lungshan Temple, which honours the Goddess of Mercy and is highly decorated once again with dragon motifs. The temple gained a higher prestige during the 2^nd World War when it was used as an air-raid shelter. Citizens flocked to the temple only to be driven out by a swarm of mosquitos. While they were outside, the building was bombed and destroyed, but no civilians were killed, thereby giving the Goddess of Mercy credit for saving them.

Next, we visited the memorial museum to Chiang Kai-Shek which is predominately given over on the first floor to the political struggles experienced by the Republic of China since its inception. The museum also houses a recreation of the late president’s office including a wax figure of him seated at his desk. The clock on the wall is stopped at the moment of his death.

Lunch, an elaborate, multi dish buffet, was held at the Grand Hotel followed by a short stop to watch the changing of the guard at the Martyrs’ Shrine honouring the military forces. The honour guard on duty today represented the Air Force.

Our last stop for the day was at the National Palace Museum, which houses 700,000 artifacts. As mentioned before this was the second day of a national holiday and the building was crowded with tourists, not only those of us from the ship, but many inhabitants taking an opportunity to view their national treasures.

---

Comments

[Elizabeth Massiah]

great trilp
Thanks for the comments and the photos,, youdo a great job of describing it,, seems as though it was worth waiting for.