Touring Taiwan Together

   From mountains and monuments, to night markets and massages, Taiwan was mysteriously exciting to explore this Memorial Day Weekend!
   Nick and I are about to celebrate our second year of marriage.......and our second year of know each other! We are still learning things about ourselves and each other every day, and while we are here in Okinawa, and it's just us two, we have decided to take advantage of our long weekends and learn more about the world as well.
   This past weekend our lovely destination was Taiwan. As our flight was nearing the mountainous coast blanketed in a swirling fog, I felt as though we were on a different planet. Mystifying......that was my thought.

 

Ximen in Taipei, tons of shopping with some good little bars and restaurants.

 

Taiwanese woman selling bracelets outside Lung Shan temple

 

Waterfall by the Lung Shan temple

 

Inside Lung Shan temple. I was blown away with the exquisite carving details that made up this temple and all others in Taiwan. Gold writing and statues, brilliantly painted dragons on the rooftops, incense burning, and people praying. Very cool experience.

 

Liberty Square, this is the National Concert Hall.

 
Statue of Chang Kai-Shek, former president of the Republic of China (Taiwan). This was taken during the changing of the guards.

 Liberty Square is 250,000 square meters total. This is the National Concert Hall.

 

The entrance to Liberty Square where Chang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall is located.

 

Chiang Kai-Shek memorial hall

 
Our last thing to trek to on our first day was Taipei 101. It was once the worlds tallest building from 2004-2010 and houses the worlds fastest elevator! We rode the elevator to the 89th floor twice as fast as our apartment elevator goes to the 9th floor. Its design is very unique as well making it one of the worlds most stable buildings and so far has withstood a 6.8 earthquake without any structural damage. Cool right? Ok that's my history  lesson for the day:)

 

View of the city from the 89th floor of Taipei 101. Now..on to the food!

Our dinner after a full day of exploring Taipei was delicious dumplings! Some were stuffed with pork, some shrimp, and some spinach. You could watch the chefs mold the dumpling while you were waiting to be seated. My favorite was the pork and shrimp mixed. I also had soup with shrimp dumplings in it, very good:) I know we ordered about 4 tables worth of food but we ate just about everything! Exploring makes you hungry

 

 Our second day in Taiwan we rented a taxi for the day with Mackenzie and Jake. It cost us about $130 between the four of us and that was one of our great decisions (except the driver got lost a couple of times in his own area...right?). Anyway, the first stop of the day was outside of Taipei and up into the mountains to a mining village called Juifen (oh yeah, they mined gold here until 1971). The village was so quaint with lots of vendors and souvenirs. If you like to find that perfect souvenir for your travels in Taiwan this is the place to go. It reminded me of being in Venice, Italy except you are in the mountains instead of by water.
 

 
Temple in Juifen. The painted carvings were so gorgeous in person. I feel like this picture doesn't do it justice.

 

View of the coast from Juifen.

Second stop of the day was Shifen. It is the broadest waterfall in Taiwan. The water was so clear with all the humidity I wanted to swim in it.

 

 
 Swinging bridge up from the waterfall.
 

 

 

Our last stop of the day was to  Yehliu Geopark. I'm not going to go into detail but it is basically a park with a lot of natural rock formations that have been named based on their shapes.

 

The park was a gorgeous place to photograph in general. The sun came out right as we were about to leave.

 

This is "Cute Princess"......hmmm take it how you want, kind of looks like a ballerina head to me.

 

This was my favorite, fossilized sand dollars! they were all over the park fossilized to the ground. It was so crazy to touch them because they were cold and hard as a rock even though they maintained some of their original white color. Very cool..

 The last day in Taiwan Nick and I wondered around Ximen together going into shops trying to find a shot glass which is "our thing" to do every new place we visit. Let me tell you.....no shot glasses to be found!! I can't tell you how many shops and malls we went into, it was a lot, and no shot glasses, only paper lanterns. Luckily, we went to a cool bar that night called Brass Monkey and they let us keep one of there shot glasses....WIN!!  This picture is of the hot pot meal we had that night with Jake and Mackenzie. It has hot broth with seasonings thrown in and you order plates of meat and vegetables to cook in the broth then eat. It was a unique experience! The dumplings were still my favorite though.

 
So that's about it! Taiwan was a great long weekend trip. I feel like we were able to see just about everything we wanted to, ate good food, and make lasting memories:) That's another to check off  our travel list! Until next time:)