Taiwan trip Day 4

So, Duane is off to work and I'm off on my own for the day! First on the list is to do a walking tour of the Chiang Kai-shek memorial.  It is huge!  This is just one of the "gates" to the memorial - quite elaborate.

This is a theater that is used by different groups.  Workers were setting up for an event, which was a little distracting!

A man and his family were taking photos - and he asked me to take one of them all together.  I, of course, obliged - and asked him to do the same with my camera!  The umbrella is not for the rain, but for the sun!  I will probably mention several times over the next week how incredibly hot it is!  You can't see it in the photo, but sweat is dripping off me!

Lovely view of the grounds. 

Inside the bronze statue of the revered Generalissimo and an ornate ceiling.  Huge building, but that's about all there is inside.

View back towards an entrance from the top of the huge stairway.

The statue is guarded by two stoic guards.  They stand perfectly still on a wooden box for an hour and are relieved with great ceremony at the top of the hour.  Lucky me - I only had to wait 12 minutes for the "changing of the guard"

The yellow-vested volunteers got everyone out of the way for the new guardsmen.  They marched in in perfect unison.

Pictures were snapped by everyone in the crowd - again, someone offered to snap my photo...with the guardsmen in the background.

These three new guards make their way towards the statue and.....

the two original guards join them....eventually two new ones take their places for their exciting hour of standing still....and the other three march in perfect unison out of the building.   Seems a bit much for guarding a bronze statue in a country where EVERYONE seems to obey the rules.  But they all seemed to enjoy watching the spectacle!

View as I was walking away.  Quite a grand structure!

Next on my tour was a visit to the nearby Taipei Botanical Garden.

Just another pretty "green space" - but they did have an interesting  Lotus Pond - the plants were in various stages of life, some dying off, some flowering.

Really a beautiful flower - the bud is huge about the size of both your hands cupped.

Left over after the flowering stage is the seed pod - these were all over the pond and are a little "alien" looking!

Oh, and I have to share some of my food with you from my outings...this is my lunch from a sushi stand - in order clockwise from the top (as best as I can figure out...)  bite-size pieces - smoked octopus, small fish-roe (caviar), shrimp with Japanese sauce, large fish-roe/cucumber, smoked salmon, a triangle shaped seaweed rice, and an un-identified fish.  Over to the right is an additional sushi roll that was most-likely seaweed, but I'm not really sure what it was.  A cabbage salad rounded it out and a beer.  Total $6US.  It was all very good!