228 Peace Memorial Day

In Taiwan there tends to be a lot of holidays which I don't quite understand but I still love them anyways. On Thursday we had Peace Memorial Day. It was a welcome relief and a much needed day off. Although we did have the pleasure of catching a train at 7:30 in the morning which I wasn't real excited about but at least we got started on our day early. Mary really enjoyed her trip on the train, as she had a little extra time to catch up on her reading of love poems. We finally got to Taipei about 10 and got the day started.

We first went to the 228 park which included the Chiang Kai-Shek memorial as well as a few temple and a grand enterance as seen below.

Not only did we get to see the memorial but the best part of the park and really the day turned out to be the concert rehersal which we saw while wandering around the park. The concert was being directed by a man from Hungary and the orchestra was joined by a thousand-voice choir. It was really awesome and relaxing to just stand and listen to the music. I think that all of us would have liked to stay for the concert but it would not be until 7:30 that evening. I did think it was strange that there were no security guards to monitor the people watching what was going on. But seeing as Taiwan doesn't allow guns in the country it might not be such a large problem after all.

This is Chiang Kai-Shek surrounded by kites. I don't know why the kites are important but Fong Chuei means kite in Taiwanese and wind blows in mandrain. It symbolizes freedom and democracy as the poster told us. I am unsure of whether or not the jack-o-lantern is always there but it did strike me as a little strange. But then again we went into a clothing store and heard Christmas music playing.

Following our visit to the park we went out for Korean food for Katie's birthday and it was pretty good. Joseph and I did a little exploring prior to being seated and found the second story ready for service but with the lights turned off. Turns out that the pictures we took better represents what the restaurant then the pictures of us eating. We cooked all of our food on these B-B-Q's and then wrapped our food in leaves, not sure what kind but at least they were edible.

After the Korean restaurant the main attraction included going to Cold Stone and getting a mint ice cream bowl with brownies and caramel. After which Jessica, Joseph and I wandered off by ourselves and explored a park, went window shopping and when to an Italian restaurant and French pastry shop. The pastries had no hint of the normal Taiwanese flavor, which we were extremely grateful for. Initially we had planned on saving some for the train ride home, but after one bite we were done for.

All told it was a relaxing day and we were grateful to catch the 9:10 train home instead of catching an 11 o'clock train.