Taipei Day 4

Anne had to work today so I was on my own. This left me with 2 options. Stay in a small hotel room and watch one of the 3 English channels all day or set out on an adventure to explore Taipei and its surrounding areas. It was a tough choice but after hours of thought and some pro and con comparisons I decided on the latter. I set up a half day tour from the hotel actually beginning my day before Anne did.

The first stop on the tour (after a delicious complimentary breakfast buffet) was Hollywood… er Keelung (pronounced Jee Long). It was kind of weird seeing a white sign on a mountain like the Hollywood sign for a city just north of Taipei. Here is an interesting weather effect for those of you meteorologists out there. A number of the roads out of Taipei take you through tunnels drilled into the mountains. It is sunny when you enter the tunnels and raining when you leave it. This is a common occurrence and is typical more often than not (or so I am told). After arriving in Keelung, we went to see their large Buddha. She (though in most other places it would be a he) is located on top of a mountain and is tall enough for you to ascend up on a couple very narrow and steep flights of stairs. There is also a large bell you can ring. This bell likely has some significance, but I was too busy taking pictures to listen to what the tour guide was saying. Unlike the Xian Bell Tower this bell was free to ring. I am sure there was also some relevance to the large golden dogs on both sides of the Buddha, but I wasn’t paying attention to that part either.

The next stop was to a small ocean village. It is said to rain most of the day almost every day all year round. This seasonally depressive town is the home of the Yehliu Geopark. Basically it is a large rock beach that has been shaped by time, wind, and water to resemble a variety of everyday items. Their most famous rock is the Queen’s head. It is a little weird walking through the park. It almost feels like you are walking on a foreign planet as the rocks are like nothing I have ever seen before.

The last stop on the tour was, as always, to a highly recommended (by the tour guide) souvenir shop. They profess to have one of a kind items at a low cost. What this really means is that you are a silly tourist who is too lazy to go to a local market and find everything they have there at less than a quarter of the price of what you will find at the tour stop.

After the tour ended I took a short walk to a near by restaurant. As a self professed connoisseur of McDonalds around the world I had to add one more to the ever growing list. Do you frequent Mickey D’s? Think you know the McDonalds menu pretty well? Are you sure… I don’t think you recall seeing a taro cake on the menu do you. I know I didn’t. On my way back from McDonalds I took a couple pictures of a temple on the side of the road. This was the second on I saw in Taipei and I just couldn’t pass it up again.




After work Anne and I went to dinner with some more of her family and later we went to a place in Taipei call Lover’s Lane. It is a small area which would be good place to take a date.