February 11: A Long Day Full of New Experiences

Having crashed after dinner last night, we awoke twice last night: first about 1am, and then again about 4am, before finally getting up for good about 8am. During the 4am "wake break", we stayed awake for about an hour, talking, doing our daily Wordle ritual, and thanking God for the amazing journey we've had -- this journey to Asia and the journey of life and our 46 years together, 45 of them as spouses. However, realizing that it was too early to be awake, a we went back to sleep.

We started the day with a wonderful array of fruit that Espy had prepared -- dragonfruit, kiwi, blueberries, pineapple, and a local variety of apples- wax apples. The wax apple was a new fruit for us, and the dragonfruit was a purple color. (We are used to seeing white dragonfruit in Atlanta.) The fruit was delicious, and THEN, she served tamales for breakfast.

After breakfast, we left the apartment, headed out for what would be a long day, full of new experiences in sights, sounds, flavors, and more. We started the day by taking a cab to the National Palace Museum. The National Palace Museum is a museum in Taipei, Taiwan. It 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 mainland China (Beijing) during the Republic of China retreat after the civil war. Here are some photos from the Palace grounds and the exhibits.

(Statue of Sun Yet-sen, considered the "father of modern China.)

After visiting the museum, we had lunch at the Silks Restaurant and then headed to our second stop of the day, the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Center. While visiting the Memorial Center, we stayed and watched a lion dance and a dragon dance. These dances are the traditions of a Lunar New Year celebration in Chinese culture.

After watching the traditional dance performances, we made our way to Taipei 101, which is the name for the tallest building in Taiwan at 508 meters (1,675 ft) high. It took quite a while to get to the top, because there were a few long lines we had to go through and timed tickets that did not permit us admittance to the top until 7pm. After making it to the top, we went to dinner at a great steak restaurant Smith & Wollensky which was across the street. We then took a cab home -- Doug slept through much of the cab ride -- and finally turned in for the day.