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.
South Korean K-pop girl group Blackpink are to make Kaohsiung the first stop on their Asia tour when they perform at Kaohsiung National Stadium on Oct. 18 and 19, the event organizer said yesterday. The upcoming performances will also make Blackpink the first girl group ever to perform twice at the stadium. It will be the group’s third visit to Taiwan to stage a concert. The last time Blackpink held a concert in the city was in March 2023. Their first concert in Taiwan was on March 3, 2019, at NTSU Arena (Linkou Arena). The group’s 2022-2023 “Born Pink” tour set a
The Sports Administration yesterday demanded an apology from the national table tennis association for barring 17-year-old Yeh Yi-tian (葉伊恬) from competing in the upcoming World Table Tennis (WTT) United States Smash tournament in Las Vegas this July. The sports agency said in a statement that the Chinese Taipei Table Tennis Association (CTTTA) must explain to the public why it withdrew Yeh from the WTT tournament in Las Vegas. The sports agency said it contacted the association to express its disapproval of the decision-making process after receiving a complaint from Yeh’s coach, Chuang
The Taiwan High Court yesterday upheld a lower court’s decision that ruled in favor of former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) regarding the legitimacy of her doctoral degree. The issue surrounding Tsai’s academic credentials was raised by former political talk show host Dennis Peng (彭文正) in a Facebook post in June 2019, when Tsai was seeking re-election. Peng has repeatedly accused Tsai of never completing her doctoral dissertation to get a doctoral degree in law from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) in 1984. He subsequently filed a declaratory action charging that
The Hualien Branch of the High Court today sentenced the main suspect in the 2021 fatal derailment of the Taroko Express to 12 years and six months in jail in the second trial of the suspect for his role in Taiwan’s deadliest train crash. Lee Yi-hsiang (李義祥), the driver of a crane truck that fell onto the tracks and which the the Taiwan Railways Administration's (TRA) train crashed into in an accident that killed 49 people and injured 200, was sentenced to seven years and 10 months in the first trial by the Hualien District Court in 2022. Hoa Van Hao, a