Costa Serena Postcard #6 – Keelung, Taiwan

Today was our first port of call for this cruise and somewhere we had pre-booked a private tour. The company I booked with came as a recommendation on Cruise Critic so I was confident it should work out okay and pre arrival communication via WhatsApp was excellent. Our guide and driver was a young lady called Jennifer Yang who was a freelance guide for Just Taiwan Tour  and our itinerary was as follows:

Pick up from Keelung port arrival hall 09:00am

Transfer to Taipei city Photo shoot at Taiwan Presidential Building

Visiting. Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall / Liberty Square

Visiting Lungshan Temple

Lunch at famous Yongkang Street / try Taiwan style vegan cuisine

Photo shoot at Taipei 101

Return to Keelung port drop off 15:00pm

I will group my photos together at each of the places we visited to simplify viewing and add a brief explanation.

Transfer to the city took about 40 minutes and we made a quick photo stop at the Taiwan Presidential Building. Being a Sunday morning, the roads were really quiet and we were able to cross the city quickly without much hassle and were also finding parking spaces easy to find as well.

From there we made our way to The National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall which is a landmark dedicated to the former leader. The walls are all decorated with white marble

We timed it perfectly to watch the Changing of the Guards ceremony and then climbed the 89 steps to see the bronze statue of Chiang Kai-shek just inside the memorial hall at the top.

It was then back down to the ground floor for quick look at one or two of the exhibits in the museum and take a look at his library room. I loved the fact that many of the depictions of Chiang Kai Shek showed him with a big smile on his face. Much better than the usual stoney faced ones you see just about everywhere else.

After a brief stop to photograph Liberty Square we were on the move again and this time to visit Lungshan Temple which is a well-known temple originally built in the 1700s and honors both Buddhist & Taoist deities. A lot of the detailing was absolutely stunning and I hope the photos are able to show this.

Once we were done at the temple, it was time for lunch and Jennifer had done her research and found three places that were practically vegan and whose menus were typical Taiwanese dishes. I can’t remember the names of what we ate but I can tell you it was really tasty.

We wandered a bit around the local market to see and smell what was on offer.

Our final stop was the Taipei 101 for a photo stop and a quick look around the huge shopping mall at its base. We are not shoppers and the mall could have been anywhere in the world. The queues to go up the tower were over and hour long and the estimated total experience time was 2 hours which we didn’t have time for so maybe something to do if we ever come back.

We had a fabulous day and Jennifer was the perfect guide, nothing was too much trouble and because there was just the 2 of us, we could move swiftly around and see the must see things. She was continually taking photos of us and then shared them over WhatsApp at intervals over the day. There were over 100 so we have some great memories of the day.

Fitbit Steps – 14,592