4 day vacation - Day 1 and 2 in Taipei

April 1st through the 4th is a national holiday for Taiwan known for tomb sweeping, they take the time to visit, and care for family and friends that has passed away. During this time, schools are out of session on Monday and Tuesday.

Through our stay we have been planning ahead for this weekend, making plans for traveling around the rest of the island. Since it is a holiday, people travel and lot and tourist locations are filled quickly. We have been looking forward to this long weekend with a little bit of time off! However, we did not get much "time off". I will leave out the majority of details to save you from reading a book that you did not anticipate on picking up hen opening this. haha

On Friday night, at about 11 pm, we left Kaohsiung on a bus to travel to Taipei overnight. We arrived in around 4:30 in the morning. Thank goodness the hostel we planned to stay at on Saturday night let us check in early and drop our bags off, we were hoping they had beds for available for us so we could go back to bed. It was raining and cold, we had no idea what we were going to do if they did not. Lucky for us, they did; so we got settled into our beds at the hostel and went back to sleep.

On Saturday morning we woke up and had plans with a fellow Iowa State student, Kevin, and his cousin, Joy, to show us around Taipei. They were so generous to bring us around the city and take us to the top places to see. Without them we only would have made it to half of the places while spending most of our time trying to navigate around. With them we got to climb up War Ship Mountain to a secret spot of Kevin's that over looks the city. I must add that Taipei is always cloudy and raining, completely opposite of Kaohsiung, and the week leading up to our trip rain was in the forecast and it was supposed to be very cold. We lucked out again, and it was the most beautiful day we could have asked for; clear, sunny, and breezy.

After climbing back down from the mountain we made our way into the city to get lunch. Lunch was amazing, we love being in the company of people who speak Chinese here because we usually get to eat better food because we do not have to rely on the pictures to order. We went to one of the famous restaurants in Taipei that had quite a wait to get in, but it was worth it! Something we noticed when walking around the city by this point in time, was that we say many more foreigners in one day that we have seen the entire time in Kaohsiung. The bigger city and more tourist attractions, brought more people traveling through. Over the course of our entire visit, we met people from Colorado, Utah, Missouri, and South Dakota; it was very small world feeling when we got to talking with these people.

We made our way to a national memorial museum for Taiwan's first president. the structure is currently being renovated, but we could still enter and learn more about the history of Taiwan. Every hour, on the hour, the guards switch shifts for guarding the statue being doing a marching routine. The statue resembled a lot with the Lincoln memorial we are used to seeing. Not only did we learn so much here, the outside memorial and view was incredible.

Next on the list was Taipei 101. The 10th tallest building in the world. The one with the fastest moving elevator. The only one in which you can see the "Damper", which is a ball in the center of the building to help keep its center of gravity. It keeps the building standing during in-climate weather, like typhoons. Ky and I decided to go up, and are glad we did! The view was incredible and it was such a great day to do it because we were able to see so far. We could identify places that we had visited throughout the day and be amazed by the view.

It was time to wind down from our adventures, so we decide to head to the downtown area to get some dinner and drinks. Kevin and Joy took us to an area referred to as A7. It was a small area that had a lot of food vendors and music. It was similar to a mix between a summer fest and farmers market. After we got dinner we walked around the streets a little bit to which to our surprise was intentional, because there were a ton of street performers. It was so cool to see some of the talents that people here have. After this, Joy took us to the hotel that she used to bartender at. Along the way we had no idea what we were about to see because she played it down to being no big deal, but this was one of the most famous hotels in Taiwan, and it showed; it was absolutely beautiful. I had never been in such a fancy looking hotel. If I remember right, I think she said it costs about 4 to 5,000 USD per night to stay here. We got to go up to the eleventh floor I think, to where the outdoor pool was on outside and overlooked the city it was incredible view to see the city light up at night; I can only imagine what staying here would be like.

After such an eventful day, we made our way back to our hostel and crashed!
The next day we spent mostly on our own, exploring down town and doing a little shopping. It was nice to have the tour the day before because it made getting around a lot easier for us today. We left Taipei around 4 in the afternoon and boarded a train that was taking us to Hualien City, next stop on the  vacation adventures!