Another weekend, another adventure.

This morning was bright and sunny and the flowers in our park were all abloom.

It was a good day to head down into the subway and explore a new part of the city. The subway system is new, clean and very convenient. There are only two lines, one running north-south, the other east-west. At the station where the two lines cross there is a beautiful glass ceiling called the Dome of Light. It's pretty impressive.

We were heading down to the harbor to visit the former British Consulate building. It was built in 1865 and is the oldest western-style building in the city. It hasn't been used by the British for over 100 years and it fell into disrepair until 1986 when the Kaohsiung government renovated the grounds and buildings. It's now one of the big tourist attractions in the city.

At the end of the subway line we found a sidewalk cafe of sorts and fortified ourselves with a light lunch.

Not sure what we ate. Something with egg, a dumpling kind of thing, an odd waldorf salad sandwich, milk tea. It was enough to give us energy to wend our way through the streets in search of our destination.

We made a wrong turn and took this tunnel...

...and found ourselves at National Sun Yat-sen University. It was a beautiful campus but not where we wanted to be, so we came back through the tunnel and found this lovely little sign:

So up the walkway we went. The consulate is at the top of a small knoll overlooking the entrance of the harbor. I'm pretty sure it's located on the prettiest plot of land in the entire city. Here's the building:

Here's the view towards the city:

And the view in the opposite direction towards the ocean:

We walked down to the beach just out of sight around the corner of this view. The university's sports fields are right at the shore but the beach itself was pretty deserted.

I think the Taiwanese feel that once the calendar says summer is over you just don't go to the beach. All the tourists were back at the consulate, although they parked the buses by the beach.

You see these buses all around the city. They are full of mainland Chinese taking in the sites. The bus pulls up, out they come, they take some pictures, browse the gift shop, march back on the bus and go off to the next stop. I hope to never find myself on one of those tours.

Instead of the bus we used our feet to find our way back to the subway, stopping at our favorite mango ice shop on the way and stumbling upon a field full of kite flyers next to the subway stop.

It was marvelous day. And we still had time after getting home to head out to the produce market, but that's another story.