Our ship docked in Keelung which is about a 40 minute local train ride. Tickets are cheap, just $2.50 round trip. And it was finally warm! 28C.

We took a cab from the main train station to the National Palace Museum to see the treasures that were taken to Taiwan from the Forbidden Palace in Beijing in 1933 to save them from the Japanese.

This museum was amazingly crowded. In some galleries, we had to queue to go in! But the museum is beautiful, with many treasures and has one of the largest collections of ancient Chinese art in the world. It also had good English signage.

Some highlights included jade, especially a carved ball with six or seven spheres nested within, a beautiful Chinese cabbage made from jadeite, early bronzes that were highly decorated and beautifully carved quartz and amethyst vases.

We met David and Carolyn for lunch in the museum restaurant and then headed to another floor to see the painting and calligraphy. Landscape art was established early -  344-406 AD and we saw lovely naturalistic views of rivers and trees. Think when the Europeans started painting like that!

Included in our ticket was a garden adjacent to the museum where we saw a pair of black swans. And a zigzag bridge, designed to block evil spirits who can only go in straight lines.

Keelung where we were docked is a bit gritty with some new buildings and a cultural centre. Evidently people from Taipei come for the old style night market and the seafood.

Back on board in time for tea. Oceania does a great tea time with your own pot of tea, tasty  finger sandwiches and excellent sweets, cakes, cookies and scones with cream, etc. The servers wander around to tempt you! After tea, I joined my trivia team and we managed to tie for second place.