Keelung/Taipei, Taiwan

Arrived Keelung port at 12:00 noon and met our guide. Today we had four people in our group. Tom, our driver/guide, had a comfortable van for four of us.
The goal for today was to visit Taipei and see as much as possible in one day.
The traffic to Taipei was light and we got to the Nationals Palace Museum in 40 minutes.

This museum has a permanent collection of nearly 700,000 pieces of Chinese artifacts and artworks, many of which were moved from the Palace Museum in the Forbidden City in Beijing, as well as five other institutions throughout mainland China during the ROC retreat. The museum's collection encompasses items spanning 8,000 years of Chinese history from the neolithic age to the modern period. The museum building itself was built in 1965.
The museum is huge, unfortunately we did not have time to see everything. Had to concentrate on the most important collections.

One of more interesting places we saw was Longshan Temple. It was built in 1738 and was rebuilt multiple times due to the earthquakes and bombing in 1945.

We visited old area of Taipei dated to Quing Dynasty.

Also, among many places we visited was Ching Kai-Shek Memorial Hall. Very impressive structure.

We stopped to take pictures of so called building Taipei 101. The building was officially classified as the world's tallest from its opening in 2004 until the 2009 completion of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

Back in the van, we ask our guide to take us to a restaurant in Keelung close to the port. I found highly rated restaurant, but when we got there, it was completely booked. The waitress suggested another one few minutes drive.
We had a delicious dinner and after dinner walked to the night street market and back to the ship.
We had a wonderful day.Read more