Sightseeing on Saturday

After sleeping very well on Friday, we wanted to sightsee and visit the most important sights in Taipei. This will probably be one of the only weekends I am in Taipei, since I plan on traveling on the weekends.

Our day went as follows-

Morning: In the morning, the hotel manager of our hotel gave us a tour of the local area. We also picked up our Easy Cards, which are debit cards for the subway system. You simply swipe your card whenever you go on the subway or bus and it subtracts that amount from your balance. We also visited a local market where they sell food, fresh produce, and live chicken and fish.

After this, we went to the Chiang Kai Chek Memorial. It was partially closed, due to renovations. However, it had neat traditional architecture.

Afternoon: After the memorial, we went to Taipei 101-the world's tallest building. The Chairwoman of the building is a USC alumni, so she gave us free tickets to go to the observatory at the 91st floor. It was great having such a clear panorama view of Taipei and we had an English audio tour, so we could figure out what everything was. We also met some young Americans-one guy was a grad student at Georgetown and will be working at the State Dept. as well. The other guy was just about to enter law school.

In addition to seeing the observation area, we also went to the very bottom of the building, which houses a very upscale shopping mall. We ate there, as well. They have an amazing food court, with tons of Asian food as well as Western favorites. I was very excited to eat American food! I have already become tired of the Chinese food after only a day.

After Taipei 101, we went looking for the paper district, which is a famous area. We got very lost and wandered around for about an hour. Finally, we were so exhausted from the heat (85 degrees and extremely humid), we took a cab back to the hotel for about $3.

Evening: We had dinner at the local night market. As I mentioned earlier, the food is definitely different here- It will certainly be easy to diet. I had a scallion pancake and some fresh fruit (which is very tasty here)! Kelly had some noodles and the owner of the stand wanted to put kidneys into them-fortunately, he relented.

We planned on going to a pub after dinner, as we have a whole row of bars right near the hotel. However, we were both so exhausted, we wound up falling asleep.