Taipei
Long after our flights were booked, we were given an itinerary change, courtesy of Air Canada! Originally we were just changing planes in Taipei on the way home, but the outgoing flight was cancelled so we had an extra day in Taipei. As a result, we booked a hotel for the night and a tour of the city on the next day. We should have taken some shots at the hotel because it was really different--it turned out to be a "love" motel where you paid before seeing the room and you could drive right into a garage and not be visible. It wasn't that far from the airport so it was difficult to get a good meal; we found a pizza place a few kilometres down the road for dinner.
The driver for our tour picked us up in the morning, showed us the highlights and then dropped us off at the airport. He turned out to have spent a few years in Toronto and he was a Raptors fan, so we had lots to talk about.
Dalongdong Baoan Temple - Our first stop was at the Dalongdong Baoan Temple. It was constructed in 1805 and has an emperor as its presiding deity (Baosheng Dadi). This is an active religious site and we saw people praying and providing food in support of their prayers. Our guide told us that it was quite common for people to come and make offerings, ask questions, and take the counsel from games of chance to tell them what to do.
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Grand Hotel - Next our guide took us to the Grand Hotel where we walked around and looked at the views.
The Grand Hotel has something going on with sports cars today. A lot of fast red cars are placed around for photo ops.
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Taipei 101 - Tapei 101, formerly known as the Taipei World Financial Centre, is a sky scraper that at one time was the world's tallest building. We walked through the building and went to the top to see the panoramic view.
It is the big blue building that dwarfs everything else.
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Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall - We didn't have the time for a full tour of the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, but we walked in through the Dazhong Gate and saw a few of the highlights.
This is the actual Dazhong Gate
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Around Taipei - Below are a few other photos taken as we travelled around.
This is the front of the Vegan restaurant Plants which our guide selected because we told him Sharon was gluten free. There are great shadows in the window, especially of JP taking the picture!
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