Taipei, finally!!

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Geo: 25.02, 121.45

We were up at 5.30 this morning as again we had a plane to catch, this time we are hoping all is going to be ok. We left the Crowne Plaza Hotel at 6.45am in a taxi and hoped this driver wasn't a race car driver like yesterday. The start wasn't too bad but 5 minutes into the journey, he started honking his horn, many times for no reason, just honk, honk, a long honk, honk,honk!! No one even near us and honk!
Today at the airport, there was a lot more people checking in, and this time, we got our tickets and proceeded through customs, worried we had too much carry on bags but nothing was said. A bit of duty free shopping, then away we went, finally to Taipei.
The flight was ok, so much smog, all the way to Taipei, although we did get above it, you could still see it below.
We arrived a little bit late but all good, went through customs, then we were greeted by Lisa, one of our loyal suppliers we have been dealing with for a while. She picked us up, then took us to one of her factories. She was also taking us to our hotel but on the way, we stopped and had lunch, we had a feast, cooked in front of us, about 5 different courses, a little bit of everything from cabbage to egg and rice, then bean shoots, and beef and pork and I think tofu, something here was white spicy!! Lunch was delicious. Back in the car again, we drove for a further 40 minutes or so, along the way, it suddenly got really busy on the roads, apartments appeared suddenly and we were driving on elevated freeways that went for miles, everywhere you looked, there were these elevated roads and down on ground level, roads also heading the same direction. The population here is nearly 2.7 million people, the roads have to accommodate for this. We arrived at our hotel, Forward Hotel, streets are very narrow, with lots of restaurants nearby, looks like a great spot. The train station is very close by too. 
Lisa left us at the motel, so once checked in, we went off wandering again, walking for miles! 
We found a lot of things here not cheap at all, clothing and shoes, but we probably are not in the cheaper areas, we hope. Back to our room, where we poured ourselves a drink, this time from Duty Free, we bought vodka as the Brandy was way too expensive. After catching up on emails, etc, we later went out walking again to get some dinner, we found earlier an Indian restaurant, so we walked there, only 2 blocks away and got takeaway, then went back to our room to eat it. It was ok for a Chinese Indian meal!! 
We watched movies in bed and drank vodka after dinner, we might be boring but we thought it was good!!

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Photos

Space Shuttle
The Space Shuttle

On the moon
Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon. July 20, 1969. This exhibit is a mockup of a later moon walk where ricks and core samples were retrieved.

Aiming at young scientists
Aiming at engaging young scientists...

Aiming at young scientists
Aiming at engaging young scientists...

Saturn V building
Saturn V building

Memorial Grove
Memorial Grove of live oak trees in memory of the astronauts lost in the fire on Apollo 1 and the Challenger explosion.

Memorial Grove
Memorial Grove of live oak trees in memory of the astronauts lost in the fire on Apollo 1 and the Challenger explosion.

The new Mission Control
The new Mission Control

Mission Control
Mission Control

The Saturn V engines
Saturn V engines

Saturn V booster rocket
Saturn V booster rocket

The capsule
The whole point of the gigantic Saturn V rocket was to get this capsule out of the Earth's gravity and into outer space

Neutral Buoyancy Lab
NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Lab

Comments

[Bernie]

You should hire a motorbike .