Taipei, Taiwan

The forecast had called for rain today and it was right :(

We didn’t plan to do much today, partially cause of the rain and also because we had to pack up for our flight to Seoul tomorrow. We had accumulated quite a bit of stuff over the past two weeks (including my shoes!) and it all needed to fit in one suitcase each.

Anyways we started the day at National Taiwan Museum Nanmen Branch. On the way there we walked through 228 Peace Memorial Park. It’s dedicated to the Feb 2, 1947 massacre of thousands participating in the drive for independence. (I knew very little of Taiwan's history until this trip). The park was peaceful in the rain.

The museum was small but excellent. There’s several branches, it’s the Nanmen one that we visited. It’s built in an old camphor factory. The ground floor was about the history of camphor and opium in Taiwan. Camphor is still used today in some products, including Salonpas (pain relief patches) and Tiger Balm. The upstairs was a special exhibition on the history of electricity in Taiwan which I found way more interesting than I would have thought. Both floors were really cool, with good English descriptions.

We had lunch at a sushi place based on Google maps. It was okay. We’ve had such great sushi on this trip that anything less is just meh. We did like their scallops (with lime), squid and yellowtail.

After lunch we took the MRT up to the Taipei Fine Arts Museum. This had cool contemporary art and was a nice contrast to the museums we saw in the morning. By 3pm we tapped out, and took the MRT home.

We had reservations for dinner at the hotel restaurant. It’s highly rated and based on their breakfasts we had high hopes. We ordered a la carte - appetizers to share (soft shell crab, grilled cauliflower and a deconstructed pho). All were excellent. We both had pork dishes for our mains which were also excellent. It was a nice end to our Taiwan leg of the trip!