Today we arrived at the port of Keelung in Taiwan and boarded a bus for the
capital city of Taipei, located about half an hour away.
There we visited
several key sites, including the fantastic National Palace Museum, home to more
than 600,000 artifacts; the Martyr’s Shrine war memorial, where we saw a
changing-of-the-guards (a detail of which appears below); and the memorial hall dedicated to Chiang Kai-Shek, who
ruled the nationalist Republic of China from 1928 to 1975 (an entrance to which can be seen at right).
We had an excellent lunch
at the Grand Hotel, built during the 1960s largely to accommodate American
troops on R&R from duty in Vietnam.
Throughout the city we saw people
readying themselves for the Chinese New Year, a key holiday in Taiwan, and I
purchased a small, hand-carved wooden rooster as a memento of my trip.
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