5-Day Senior Tour

Day 1 – Taipei City

• Fly into Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport near Taipei. By the time you’ve transferred to your hotel in the capital, we’ll have finalised a plan for the rest of the day that matches your interests and energy levels.
• Depending on time available and weather, this may include a look at Taipei Botanical Garden, a stroll around Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall (a landmark dedicated to Taiwan and Nationalist China’s former leader), or simply unwinding in a hot spring.

Day 2 – National Palace Museum and Yangmingshan Park

• We’ll spend as much of the day inside the magnificent National Palace Museum as you want, taking lunch if it suits your plans at the museum’s Silks Palace restaurant. The remainder of the day will be given over to touring sights in the northern part of the city. It’s a short hop from the museum to the Martyrs Shrine, where the hourly changing of the guard is a display of breathtaking precision.
• If the hills near this part of the capital are calling to you, we can drive up to Grass Mountain Chateau in Yangmingshan National Park. A former residence of Chiang Kai-shek, it was built in 1920. Even after a complete renovation less than a decade ago, it continues to look thoroughly Japanese, right down to the sliding doors. Another late-afternoon option is the observatory at Taipei 101 for sunset views over the city and beyond. Taipei 101 is in the heart of Xinyi District, the city’s most modern shopping area, so you can get some souvenir- and gift-buying done.
  

  

• If you’re in Taipei on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday or Saturday, think about taking in a show at Taipei EYE. To finish up the evening, we can bring you to that most Taiwanese of places: A local night market, where tasty snack foods are sold by outdoors vendors.

Day 3 – Sun Moon Lake

• Today we’ll be driving for the better part of three hours to Sun Moon Lake. We can make at least one halt en route, perhaps in the vicinity of the woodcarving centre of Sanyi to visit Shengxing Railway Station and Longteng Broken Bridge. The former is a gorgeous Japanese-era wooden building at the heart of a picturesque village. The latter is what remains of a railway bridge built in 1909, damaged beyond repair in a terrible earthquake in 1935, then further wrecked in another big quake in 1999.
• We’ll reach the lake in time for a delightful afternoon boat cruise. Once you’ve had your fill of views of this shimmering body of water and the mountains that surround it, we’ll bring you to your hotel to relax before dinner.
  

  

Day 4 – Tainan Ancient City

• Almost everyone agrees that just after daybreak, as the sun climbs up over the nearby peaks, is a splendid moment to appreciate the beauty of Sun Moon Lake – but of course it’s up to you whether you want to sleep in or not. After breakfast and a brief tour of lakeside attractions like Cien Pagoda (built on the orders of Chiang Kai-shek to honour his late mother) we’ll say our goodbyes to the lake and head south to Tainan.
• Tainan served as Taiwan’s capital for more than 200 years and remains a bastion of tradition. We’ll check you into your hotel before dinner, and because the city is famous for its ‘little eats’, we’ll lay out all the options from fine dining to scrumptious street snacks. Afterwards, a craft beer on Shennong Street (the best preserved of Tainan’s many old streets) or a coffee in the garden of Chihkan Tower (one of two forts built by the Dutch in the 17th century) are delightful ways to end the evening.

Day 5 –  Wrap up

• Whatever time your flight out, we’ll help you make the most of your final day in Taiwan, visiting any major sights like Confucius Temple or Fort Zeelandia we didn’t get to the previous day.
• Tainan HSR Station (where you’ll board the bullet train to the airport) is southeast of the city centre, and we can show you a couple of sights on the way. One is Xinhua Old Street, an authentic merchants’ thoroughfare from the 1920s. Another is Chimei Museum. Built around a local tycoon’s eclectic personal acquisitions, the museum has a world-class collection of violins, weapons and armour from Asia and Europe, plus sculptures and oil paintings of international significance.