Are looking for an international trip for about a week? Don’t want, or have the time to do the research and planning. Maybe you want someone else to do the driving, then we may just have the trip for you! We were looking into going to Taiwan. We only had about 1 week to visit Taiwan . In our research we found Edison Travel Service, ( Edison did not pay us to mention their name). They had a 5 day 4 night tour around the island for $438.00 per person. Drew was not very excited about doing a tour, because we have always traveled on our own. Tam had been on 2 tours, when she went to India and Kenya with her 80+ year old mother. With a little more talking Tam was able to get him to agree.
We arrived in Taiwan in the evening. We could not find an ATM machine that would accept our debit card to get cash. We always carry some U.S. dollars. We ended up exchanging some of our U.S. dollars and bought our tickets for their MRT (Mass Rapid Transit). After this experience with the ATM machine I want to start ordering some currency from the countries that we are going to be visiting. Wells Fargo, and Bank of America have been able to do this for us in the past.
From the airport terminal we took the purple line on the MRT from the airport terminal to Taipei Main Station. The purple line is the express line and takes about 35 minutes to get into the city . From the Taipei Main Station we took a taxi to the hotel.
In the middle of the night, because we were wide awake with the time change, we had emailed our nephew Paul. He was in Taiwan a few months earlier for a wedding. We asked him if he had troubles with the ATM’s. Paul suggested that we go to the 7-11 stores and try their ATM’s. Paul and his wife Alli love to travel too, so they are a great source of information. After going back to sleep we woke up early in the morning had a Chinese omelette and were ready to explore Taipei. Our first stop was to find a 7-11 store and get some cash. The 7-11 ATM worked, no problem. It is such a nice feeling to have money again. Thanks Paul!
This beautiful temple was right down the street from our hotel.
Taipei’s famous 101 skyscraper. It was the tallest building in the world from 2004 – 2010. Some people have said that the famous 101 resembles stacks of Chinese take out cartons. It looks that way to us too!
Taipei had lots of bakeries with some very delicious looking goodies!
I thought this sculpture was really cute, especially with the little one.
The next morning we were picked up at our hotel and driven through the busy streets of Taipei in a van. We ended up in a parking lot where our bus was waiting to embark on our great adventure. We were driven in the comfortable air conditioned bus to and around Sun Moon Lake. We stopped at a small town on the beautiful shore of the lake for lunch.
There were many restaurants and small take away stands to choose from for lunch. We both decided on the prawns. The prawns were very tasty!
After lunch we went to Xuanzhuang Temple.
Drew enjoyed one of the statue’s they had at the temple.
It was very relaxing and it had a nice place to sit and look out and savor Sun Moon Lake.
Down the road was our next stop, Wenwu Temple.
It had lots of gold decorations and paintings.
Wenwu Temple was just amazing!
Our last stop was at our lovely hotel, Fleur De Chine. It was a very nice room with our own special spring (mineral) water bath in our room.
In the morning this was the view from our balcony. There was a mysterious mist lingering over the lake.
A huge buffet breakfast was included in our tour price.
