Taipei, Taiwan

Luckily Heather had read through the various hotel instructions last night, cause we had to book a seating for breakfast (7am/8am/9am). We were up before our alarms, still a bit jetlagged, although at least we’re getting sleep at night.

Breakfast was excellent, I think that’s why we chose our hotel. After breakfast, we planned out our day. We have three full days now, and then two days at the end of our Taiwan leg. We had to plan around a Monday when not many museums are open. Figured we’d start with the National Palace Museum, one of the must-sees in Taipei.

We took a taxi to the museum as it’s a bit out of the centre. The weather held off so far - the forecast was for rain all day.

Bought our tickets and entered. The museum signage includes English so it’s easy to get around and understand what you’re looking at.

We started in the jade section. One of the museum highlights is the Jadeite Cabbage, but it’s on loan to the Tainan Art Museum for the next month. Fortunately we’ll actually be in Tainan next week :)

We also toured through the bronze, calligraphy and porcelain sections. I had to google to figure out the difference between porcelain and ceramic (porcelain is a type of ceramic).

The museum is very popular with tour groups. Heather was flash mobbed a number of times looking at something and had to swim her way out.

It took us about three hours to get through the museum. It’s very impressive. Most of the pieces were moved from the Forbidden City in Beijing during the Great Retreat in 1949.

Grabbed a taxi back to the centre, to Dalongdong Bao’an Temple. Google maps makes it very easy if you don’t speak the local language - it displays the destination in the local script and can sound it out too. So we had no problems communicating our destination with the taxi driver. (Maybe this is commonly known but first time we’ve used it).

We decided to have lunch first and then see the temple. Picked a random spot based on seeing the dumplings they were cooking in the front. Used Google translate to figure out the menu and order. It was excellent.

Walked back over to Bao’an Temple. It’s a Taiwanese folk religion temple, with mostly worshippers and just a couple other tourists. It’s very photogenic - I took a lot of pics.

I’ve been trying to use mostly my iPhone for pics this trip. It has a 15x optical zoom which should be good enough for city pics. It’s definitely lighter and easier to carry. Also it’s waterproof so I don’t have to worry about rain. So far the results are mixed - anything beyond a 3x zoom (when the iPhone switches over to a different lens) it looks really dithered. Anyways I’ll keep on experimenting this trip.

Next door to the Bao’an Temple is the Taipei Confucius Temple. It was similarly impressive with only a handful of people, mostly tourists here. Took a bunch more pics.

We thought about walking all the way back to the hotel, about an hour. After about ten minutes we reached a small outdoor market near Yuanshan station. Tried some snacks and then decided just to catch the subway home. Figured out how to buy a single fare. It’s zone based, cost us about $1 each to get back. You get a token which is scanned to enter, and then you drop it back when you exit at your station. Pretty easy.

Got back around 3:30pm, in time for afternoon tea at the hotel. Had a double breakfast espresso and some cookies.

Later on had a drink at happy hour and caught up in my blog. The hotel made a reservation at a restaurant about a two minute walk away. It was miserable outside, rainy and misty, so just wanted something close.

The restaurant turned out to be Michelin rated, although in Taiwan, Michelin restaurants seem to be as common as a green Pass sign in Toronto. I had the beef noodles, the recommended meal and a Taiwanese specialty. It was excellent, although from my perspective, no more so than any of the other food I’ve had here. Obviously my palette is not sophisticated enough :)