Today started similarly to yesterday, delicious breakfast and all.

After breakfast and visiting with Grace's grandparents we went to see the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall (on Wikipedia). It's a pretty impressive building located on beautiful grounds. We were also lucky enough to catch the changing of the guards. I took a bunch of pictures, some of which are below. Not pictured is the oppressive heat.

The Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall.

The National Theater.

The National Concert Hall.

The main gate.

The National Theater (left), main gate, and National Concert Hall (right). Beautiful landscaping in the foreground.

Looking up at the entrance to the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall. The underside of the roof gives a bit of a Lego vibe to me.

The gorgeous ceiling of the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall.

Guards performing the changing of the guard ceremony in front of the statue of Chiang Kai-shek.

Getting it all in one shot.

Bringing the Dominican Republic and Taiwan together!

The medal up close.

Later that afternoon we went to Taipei 101, one of the tallest buildings in the world. It was the tallest from 2004 (taking over from the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur) until 2010 (when the Burj Khalifa was completed in Dubai). Unfortunately, a lot of our pictures didn't turn out that well from haziness and the fact that there were taken through glass, but I'll include several below.

The base of Taipei 101.

Looking up at the whole thing, but a bit ungrounded.

Taipei is a big city.

Not sure what the advertisement is for, but it's certainly large. I also like how tiny and toy-like the cars appear.

I really like the building in the top right. No idea what it is, though.

Taipei at night.

Another view of Taipei at night.

One thing really cool about Taipei 101 is the tuned mass damper. It is apparently the largest and heaviest in the world in addition to being one of the few that are open for public viewing. It's truly massive (5.5 m diameter and a mass of 660 metric tons), and, in my opinion, pretty gorgeous. I snapped a few (okay, a ton) of pictures, but I'll try to restrain myself from posting all of them.

In Taiwan, everything is cute-ified, even tuned mass dampers.

Everyone needs a profile

Some pretty serious hydraulic jacks.

And some pretty serious cables.

Really cool reflections.

More angles (sorry!).

There was a massive gift shop we went through while exiting the observation deck of Taipei 101, mostly featuring a ton of really expensive coral (Taiwan is pretty famous for coral).

We met up with a friend of Grace's family to get hot pot for dinner. I'm pretty clueless as to Taipei and its neighborhoods, but it seemed like a really cool area. The food was delicious, though I am unskilled in the arts of hot pot.