Hess Banquet, Training, Lindy Hop, and Medical Check!

the city of: Gaoxiong! (Day 2)

Today was the day to see Love River! <3 Love River used to be very dirty and unappealing, but it's now cleaned up and a fun place to take a cruise on. Too bad we went on the one day they don't do cruises. Is it really romantic? Maybe... ;)

I love you! (You all know who you are! ;) )

We kept on walking till we got to Rosary Cathedral, a famous Catholic church in the city. It's always nice to be inside one.

There was an Asian type shrine to Mary. Meaning, it had a small pond and koi. It was beautiful and interesting. Wish the gate was unlocked so I could've gone in.

This is inside the church:

Then, more walking, BUT we got a shaved ice for our efforts! It's the best dessert in Taiwan. We got Mango-strawberry flavor.

　

Next we got to QiJin Island by a short ferry ride. Lots of people drove their scooters onto the bottom deck of the boat to take to this long and narrow island. QiJin actually shields Gaoxiong from some bad weather. We hadn't planned on going there actually so we didn't see all the sights on the island--but we did go to the beach! The weather was nice- not too hot, not too cold, and the sand was black!

This temple is over 300 years old- dedicated to Mazu, the sea goddess.

Since Gaoxiong is fishing town, we simply had to get ourselves a seafood dinner. So we had prawns, and fish! It was excellent! I practically ate the whole dish of prawns!

Then we checked out the Liu He nightmarket. There were a lot of tourists from Mainland China and some people had put up signs and pictures saying how communism is evil. That was interesting! The nightmarket was nice. Nothing compared to Taipei's though. ;) There was a place where you could eat snake (yuck!), and an Egyptian stall where I learned to say hello in Egyptian arabic. Also, there was a very popular papaya milk stand that was endorsed by the current president. So we tried some! ;) It was a great day!