After breakfast at the hotel, we went to this retail mall selling electronics products, K Mall. Reason: My friend took so much pictures of Taipei 101 that he ran out of space on his camera's memory card. Tsktsk..
Thereafter, we took the metro and headed for our first itinerary of the day -
Taipei Story House 台北故事館
This villa was built by a famous tea merchant during the Japanese colonial period. It has gone through a lot of changes and in 1979, the government bought over the villa with the intention to preserve it. The villa is now mainly used for holding cultural and historical exhibition. More info here.
I like this place, it's very 'culturally nice' and the villa and its surroundings is just beautiful :)
Admission to Taipei Story House, NTD 50.
This was on when we were there..
No photography in the villa actually, but i couldn't help it and they weren't very strict also :p
Bar chart comparing the usage of the various offerings during 7th month. Pro huh~
Patron Saints of Different Industries
One of the distinctive elements of Chinese religious culture is that each industry has its own patron saint deity.
After Taipei Story House, we took a bus for our next destination - Martyr's Shrine 忠烈祠 to see the guards' changing parade.
The Martyr's Shrine is a shrine dedicated to the war dead of the Republic of China, Taiwan.
Initially, i thought we missed the changing parade as we reached slightly later but luckily, it has not started :)
The changing parade was scheduled to take place every 10 minutes before the hour (i.e. 11.50am, 12.50pm etc..)
And on the way there, we saw 圓山大飯店Grand Hotel
Wiki, summarized:
After Chiang Kai-shek's retreat to Taiwan in 1949, he wanted to a hotel to treat foreign guests. His wife Soong May-ling suggested to build it on the old Taiwan Hotel on Yuanshan Mountain. Chiang decided on a Taiwanese palace-style architecture to promote Taiwanese culture to the West through its extravagance.
In June 1995, a disastrous fire broke out and the roof and upper floors were totally destroyed. In 1998, the hotel recover from the damage and became fully reopened to the public.
Following the fire, the two dragon heads on the roof were rotated 180 degrees to point inwards. As dragons are traditionally a symbol of rain and water, this was intended to symbolize preparedness against a future fire.
Each of the eight guest levels represent a different Chinese dynasty, as reflected through the murals and general decor.
The rooms facing south are offered with a paranomic view of Taipei City.
Budget rooms are available from USD$99 per night.
Like impressive huh~
If got chance, can go there stay stay see see.. :)
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[26 Jul, to be continued...]