Taipei, Taiwan

We’ve found Jan 1 to be a good day when traveling cause the things that are open are usually very under-touristed. Today we had a train ride to Taipei and then an afternoon to sightsee.

Had breakfast in Tainan, packed up, walked across the street to the train station (much easier now that we had figured out how to access the bridge).

We took a local train from Tainan main to the HSR station, about five stops. Most people were doing the same thing so it was easy, plus they announced the stations in English.

We used our local train ticket to exit and then our HSR ticket to enter the HSR station. The train system is fully automated for passengers here (I guess it’s similar to the GO train back home).

We settled in for the 90 minute ride to Taipei. We used the time to read up on Taipei and what to do over the next couple days.

In Taipei we transferred to the MRT (subway) and three stops later we were at our hotel. Easy peasy.

Our room wasn’t available yet (it was just past noon) so we left our bags behind and headed off for lunch near Taipei 101.

Our hotel had made a reservation for us at a restaurant in a mall (a lot of good restaurants are found in malls here). In the mall we ran into a Onitsuka Tiger store! I’m a big fan of Mexico 66 SD’s, but they’re very hard to find in North America. Here was a store fully stocked with them! Yes, here I was in Taiwan, shopping for shoes in a mall.

Luckily cause we hadn’t yet checked in I still had my passport on me, so was able to claim a tax credit. Conveniently there’s a tax return place right in the mall :)

We left the shoeboxes at the store to pick up later, and went for lunch. The restaurant specialized in teas (their food is also very good). We both had some premium teas, and a set lunch of fried rice with pork, miso soup and accoutrements. We also split a grilled corn appetizer. Mmm good.

Taipei 101 was a few minutes walk away. The entrance is through a mall, on the 5th floor. It was very busy. Bought our ticket at the kiosk. It’s timed entry so we had an hour to kill. We browsed through the mall, but it’s not really a browsing mall - here most stores were luxury goods stores that had retractable belt stanchions in the front to keep out the riff raff like us.

Finally our entry window came up. (Actually we went 30 minutes early but they didn’t care). Waited about ten minutes to catch the elevator. It was very quick, taking 37 seconds to reach the 89th floor.

The views are great from the observation deck, as you would expect. The coolest part was the tuned mass damper in the middle. This is a big yellow weight that acts as a counter-balance in high winds and earthquakes. They had videos of the damper swaying (I guess it’s actually the building swaying but it’s all relative) when recent earthquakes had struck.

There was a longer line up to get back down. We walked back to the Onitsuka Tiger store to pick up my shoes, and caught the subway home.

For dinner we headed back to the Michelin-starred beef noodle place near the hotel. Another day of great eating!