Missed Port and Keeling, Taiwan (Taipei)

02-23 Kaohsiung, Taiwan at Sea Sunday: Poor weather today and we need to out run a storm on the way with 70-80 mph winds. We were supposed to undergo immigration in this port but we will need to see what will happen now. We played Train but the ship was really pitching about. We will just divert and go on to the next port of Keeling, Taipei. This evening, we had dinner in Pinnacle Grill with Paul and Maureen. It was another great evening, great wine, great food, and great company! We didn’t do immigration today even though we arrived at 5p. We will see how that goes tomorrow. For today they do revise the activities and promotions with an updated information sheet.

02-24 Keelung (Taipei), Taiwan Monday: Our excursion is On Our Own in Taipei. First it was the immigration process. For us this started at 8:15a and we did end up leaving on the tour approximately 9:15a, close to the original time. This was a bus ride into town for 1 hour. We had 6 hours on our own to explore. It might have been a great day but we didn’t check things our well enough. We started walking and went into the first welcoming entrance we came too. That was a mistake! It was a maternity and baby exposition. We had a laugh with that one! Neither of us are feeling 100%, just feeling woozy and not quite right. We decided we would get a bite to eat then take the Hop-On Hop-Off bus to check things out. The only thing we could find was a spot for coffee in a mall. We were then on our search for the HO-HO stop. We walked back to Taipei 101 and found information. We gathered the information but decided we better eat something before heading out. There was a lovely food court, very crowded, but we found a spot and had a quick sandwich that we bought at 7/11, potato salad, and bottled water. Now we headed out to find the HO-HO station. After about an hour of searching we finally got the information that the bus doesn’t run on Monday. I might mention it was a bit cold and a bit rainy. I was beat by this time and we headed back to the food court. Stuart wasn’t hungry. Sharon got a chicken and Udon noodle bowl, and we shared. It was interesting trying to eat slippery noodles with a spoon or chop sticks! We met at 4:20p for our 1-hour bus ride back to the ship. Internet has been very poor in waters near China. Things should improve when we get into Japan.