Keelung-Taipei 10th April

Foggy and grey this morning, but not cold. Keelung emerged through the fog as we had breakfast. The port is narrow, a river mouth, and the city is built around it with hills on either side. Naturally it’s all industrial though with temples on the hillsides. There seem to be temples everywhere in Taiwan.
After breakfast we wandered the deck then prepared for our excursion to Taipei. These are standard cruise experiences – sheeple filing out and queuing onto rows of buses, many of which go to the same or overlapping destinations. But the alternative is learning a new transport system in every town and the ever-present risk of missing boarding.
Anyway, it was a short drive to Taipei – they’re essentially continuous, dividing by mountains pierced by tunnels. Taiwan seems quite tropical. Our first stop was a Baoan temple complex – it wasn’t clear what this is, possibly a Taoist thing.
Just across the road was a Confuscian temple.
Then back on the bus for the short hop to Taipei 101, the world’s tallest building from 2004-2010. The base was high end boutiques and there were lifts and escalators just to get to the ticket gate and the very fast elevator to floor 89. This was surprisingly not crowded and heavily decorated for spring with real flowers.

Much waiting and queuing followed to get back on the bus for a photo stop at the Chiang Kai-shek memorial and then a boring handicraft shop (not pictured) before the ride back to the boat.
All this wore us out, so we rested a while, then walked the 15 minutes to the MiaoKou Night Market as it got dark. It was narrow and busy, without feeling overly crowded, stretching a couple of blocks in an L shape. We mooched about, took photos and hobbled back to the ship for a late dinner.

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