A hotel group, working in collaboration with a major travel operator, yesterday launched a “wedding train” service offering luxury banquets with gourmet food served by a three-star Michelin restaurant.
The railway ride takes couples on a one-day trip from Taipei to Hualien County in eastern Taiwan and back, FDC International Hotels Corp said in a news release.
The total train journey lasts about 8.5 hours, including a 2.5-hour stop in Hualien for various leisure activities in the area, it said.
Photo courtesy of FDC International Hotels Corp
As exquisite wedding banquets have become an increasingly niche market in recent years, the luxury rail journey would give newlyweds and their guests a memorable experience, FDC general manager Ting Yuan-wei (丁原偉) said.
The “wedding train” has the capacity to offer a maximum of 50 banquet seats and features exclusive menus crafted by a Michelin-starred culinary team from the FDC’s Palais Collection restaurant, it said.
The banquet service is the result of a collaboration with Lion Travel Service Co, which itself already works with Taiwan Railway Corp to operate the “Future Express Kitchen” (鳴日廚房) which provides dining cars with meals prepared by top chefs.
According to the FDC, the round-trip fine dining banquet package comes with a minimum price tag of NT$600,000.
Organizing one national referendum and 26 recall elections targeting Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators could cost NT$1.62 billion (US$55.38 million), the Central Election Commission said yesterday. The cost of each recall vote ranges from NT$16 million to NT$20 million, while that of a national referendum is NT$1.1 billion, the commission said. Based on the higher estimate of NT$20 million per recall vote, if all 26 confirmed recall votes against KMT legislators are taken into consideration, along with the national referendum on restarting the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant, the total could be as much as NT$1.62 billion, it said. The commission previously announced
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday welcomed NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte’s remarks that the organization’s cooperation with Indo-Pacific partners must be deepened to deter potential threats from China and Russia. Rutte on Wednesday in Berlin met German Chancellor Friedrich Merz ahead of a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of Germany’s accession to NATO. He told a post-meeting news conference that China is rapidly building up its armed forces, and the number of vessels in its navy outnumbers those of the US Navy. “They will have another 100 ships sailing by 2030. They now have 1,000 nuclear warheads,” Rutte said, adding that such
Tropical Storm Nari is not a threat to Taiwan, based on its positioning and trajectory, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Nari has strengthened from a tropical depression that was positioned south of Japan, it said. The eye of the storm is about 2,100km east of Taipei, with a north-northeast trajectory moving toward the eastern seaboard of Japan, CWA data showed. Based on its current path, the storm would not affect Taiwan, the agency said.
The Taipei Department of Health’s latest inspection of fresh fruit and vegetables sold in local markets revealed a 25 percent failure rate, with most contraventions involving excessive pesticide residues, while two durians were also found to contain heavy metal cadmium at levels exceeding safety limits. Health Food and Drug Division Director Lin Kuan-chen (林冠蓁) yesterday said the agency routinely conducts inspections of fresh produce sold at traditional markets, supermarkets, hypermarkets, retail outlets and restaurants, testing for pesticide residues and other harmful substances. In its most recent inspection, conducted in May, the department randomly collected 52 samples from various locations, with testing showing