Taipei 101 in the background stands tall and proud as a symbol of the tenacity of the people.

A short bus ride and metro transport brought us to the City Hall Station in Downtown Taipei.  Exiting the terminal found us in a shopping mall with a variety of shops and eating places.  We explored a couple of the shops, made note of some rather interesting bakeries for later, and made our way to our primary destination for the day:  Eslite Xinyi Store.  The store offers a wide variety of books as well as fashion and accessories, housewares, gifts, etc.  Coming in from the station mall you find yourself in another food court offering a wide variety of foods.  Lunch here included a beef curry plate and a spicy beef plate both with rice and tea included.  Two plates for three people for a whopping $10 US was considered typical in price and amount of food.  There is no problem in ordering because everything has a picture of the meal and an english name for it.  The servers are very friendly and communication problems are easily avoided by pointing to what you want.

"Eslite Xinyi Store is the largest physical platform of international knowledge exchange in Asia, in which millions of books are displayed. And it is also famous for being the biggest compound mall of books, clothes, fashion designs, living gadgets and food in Taiwan, where shopping space fully represents the beauty of design."  


Formal dining areas can also be found in the store.  Two of interest to me were the Library (with a window view of Taipei 101)and the Tea Room (not to be confused with the tea room in the basement).