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Welcome to my page on Taipei. If you haven't seen the pictures from Taichung yet, click here. |
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If you didn't come from the home page and you would like to see it, click here. |
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Taiwan: Taipei |
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By a wonderful coincidence my college roommate, Tracy, was able to meet up with me in Taiwan. We spent 4 days in Taipei before we went to Taichung to join up with my parents. We had the best time catching up with each other's lives as well as touring the city. |
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This is me on the steps of the Chaing Kai Sheik memorial building. The two oranged roofed buildings in the background are the National Theater and National Concert Hall. If it was a bit warmer (it was windy and in the low 60's) there would be tons more people in the courtyard. |
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This is the Memorial as seen from the National Theater building. |
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This is the interior of the Chaing Kai Sheik Memorial. It reminded me of the Lincoln Memorial in D.C. |
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While we were at the memorial, they had a changing of the guard ceremony. It was very interesting. The new guards walked out slowly, with great precision. The exsiting guards, who were standing on small podiums on either side of the statue, walked around to join the new guards and performed a series of carefully choreographed moves that involved rifle twirling, salutes, turns, stomps and heel clicks. Each move was carefully exciuted with pauses inbetween. Sometimes everyone stood there very still and you weren't sure where to look for the next movement. |
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Back on the sides of the National Theater and National Concert Hall buildings, dozens of teenagers were gathered and dancing. They were doing a combination of the 80's breakdancing and hip-hop styles. Some were just doing freeform but others were actually practicing choreographed dances. The theater people didn't mind them being there except when the show was about to start and then they kept coming out and asking the kids to back away from the doors which they were using as practice mirrors. |
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While we were in Taipei, Tracy and I stayed at a hostel located on the 12th floor of a building that was across the street from the main train and metro station. This is a view out of the window by the elevators. Our building also had a great department store on the first 6 floors and a food court in the basement. There was also a Starbucks on the corner of the first floor. They had many western fast food stores, McD's (of course) Pizza Hut, KFC, Ponderosa and TGI Fridays. Mostly we tried to eat local, which was much cheaper, but sometimes nothing beats a quick bag of McD's fries. Fast, hot, salty and a little peice of home. |
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This is Lungshan Temple. It is a Chinese temple and one of or the oldest temples on Taiwan, over 300 years old. The air was thick with incense and the smell of the fresh flowers that were everywhere. (Sorry for the dark picture but we went at night.) The grounds were made up of a main building that was surrounded on two sides by smaller shrines, on one side by a large man-made waterfall and on the fourth side, a garden where old men were casually gathered to talk. |
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On the outside of the temple walls were more "walls" made out of lit lanterns like these. You couldn't actually see the temple from the street because of these lantern "walls". They were very pretty though. |
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This is a little corner of a temple roof that we saw walking up to the National Palace Museum on the north side of Taipei. There were many small temples like this one all over the country and all with ornate detail. |
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This is the National Palace Museum. It was 4 floors of ancient bronze vessels, calligraphy, paintings, jade work, minature wood boxes and carvings, and more. This is the main gate outside the grounds. Directly behind is the main palace building. The grounds included 3 more buildings for administration as well as some gardens with penned peacocks. |
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Finally, here is a shot from the steps of the palace looking back at the gates from the picture above. |
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If you didn't see the pictures from Taichung yet, click here or to go to the home page, click here.
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