Rows of motorbikes everywhere
National Palace Museum
Nice garden area at the National Palace Museum
Walking the grounds
Looking through the pillars at the National Palace Museum - no photos allowed inside
7-Eleven --- everywhere
Busy streets
Interesting note
Guinness Book of World Records
View from observation deck of Taipei 101
View from observation deck of Taipei 101
5th tallest building in the world - Taipei 101
37 seconds to reach the top in elevator -- my ears felt it
Interesting info on Dampers
The damper in Taipei 101
Taiwan is the "Coral Kingdom"
Taipei 101 at night
Taipei 101 during the day
Really good day! I woke up this morning at 4:45am in Hong Kong, China. It's 11pm now - I'm currently on the 10th floor of Cosmos Hotel Taipei in Taipei, Taiwan. Things went really smoothly on the travel front today. I took a taxi to the closest metro in Hong Kong around 5:15am. I then took the 30-minute express train to the airport at 5:50am. My flight was set to depart at 9:10am. The flight departed ON TIME. Fantastic stuff! I arrived into Taipei around 11:30am - about a 2hr, 15min flight.
Taipei - I'm learning all kinds of things about this place. I knew almost nothing coming into today. First off, Taipei City and New Taipei (2 separate areas) make up the Taipei Metropolitan Area - roughly 7 million people. The entire island of Taiwan is roughly 23 million. These numbers are tiny in comparison to China and the huge cities I just visited. It was a welcome change today -- I was able to walk around fairly uninhibited.
Taiwan is considered a province of China - it's claimed, but not actually controlled by the People's Republic of China. There were a few unique things I noticed right off the bat. First, about 50% of the traffic appears to be motorcycle/scooters. See picks above -- everybody is riding around on these. Next, there are 7-Eleven stores everywhere in site. Sometimes, you can stand in 1 spot and see 3 of them. They are a "1-stop shop" - buy food, drinks, rent movies, buy books, sit for coffee, mail packages, etc --- you can just about do anything at the 7-Eleven. A lot of areas of the city appear to be older, with some new sections sprinkled in. The subway system is very efficient and nicely laid out.
After getting to my hotel room, I rested for about an hour and then went out to hit the streets. My first stop was the National Palace Museum. This was the lone entry from my "1000 Things to See Before you Die" Book. The Palace Museum was originally founded in 1925 in the Forbidden City in Beijing, thus the word "palace" in its name. After a couple relocations, the National Palace Museum in Taipei was created. It has over 690,000 objects, making it the premier collection of Chinese art and culture in the world. Impressive site. Keeping an open mind on my exploration. The museum had 3 levels -- similar to the Shanghai Museum -- just with more detail and more items. There was a large section on ceramics and jade. They went into more depth on how these pieces were formed (which was more interesting to me than just seeing some decorated plates). I spent a couple hours in the museum, then walked around the markets at the Shilin metro stop -- a popular area of town.
I next took the metro to the main city center. I went to the 87th floor of Taipei 101 World Trade Center - the 5th tallest building in the world (pending the site you use). This building really stands out in Taipei - there is no way one could confuse another building for this one. The building holds all kinds of records and honors (It holds the Guinness Book of World Records for the fastest elevator, voted the tallest green building, has the worlds largest and heaviest tuned damper for stability, has won engineering honors for best design). The sites were great on the 87th floor - but I found myself more intrigued by the design than the views. I posted a couple things above.
After my observation deck trip, I then walked some of the streets in the central city section of town. I then took the metro 7 stops back to my hotel. My hotel is right by the metro entrance -- I just need to make sure I come out the correct exit tomorrow.
Here's to a good day in a brand new place in the world for me.
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