Taipei all the way!

We were planning on flying out of Taipei, so we decided we might as well spend a few days there and explore the city.

We went to the National Palace Museum.  It is a very famous museum and it's huge!  The most famous thing in the museum? A jade cabbage.  That's right, a cabbage.  It's not even very big, but we waited our turn to see it.  It was a very accurate representation of a cabbage, but I'm still not sure what the big fuss was about. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jadeite_Cabbage 
One of my favorite exhibits were some ivory miniatures.  The were impressive, some you even needed a microscope to see.  We also saw some beautiful calligraphy, bronze work, jade carvings, and some religious.  We didn't even make it through half of the museum.

We also went to the top of Taipei 101.  It's the second highest building in the world.  The viewing platform is on the 89th floor.  (There are 101 floors--I felt silly when I asked how many stories it is--it IS called Taipei 101).  The elevators inside are the fastest in the world.  It goes 1,010 m/min.  It took 37 seconds to go from the 5th floor to the 89th.  It was pretty cloudy so the view wasn't that great, but we were there in time to watch the sunset. If you're ever there, I'd recommend going around 6 pm--this way you get to see the view in the daytime, the sunset, and the lights at night.

I looked over the side of the stairwell and took a picture looking down.  Crazy!  You can't even see the bottom!


We visited the Chiang Kai-sheck Memorial, a monument dedicated to a former president of the president of the Republic of China.

We also got to do a session in the Taipei temple.

Saturday morning we left to head home.  30 hours later here I am.  Although I had tons of fun and learned a lot, there's no place like home :)