June 29
- Kate Ross
- Jul 6, 2019
- 3 min read
Traveling through Taipei is EXTREMELY EASY as their MRT system (subway) connects every corner of the city. Anyways, Saturday June 29 I traveled around the northern bit of Taipei by way of Taipei's Red Line on the MRT.
My first stop of the day, Guandu Temple. After about 70 minutes from my 捷运站 (bus stop) I got off at Guandu Station, walked 15 minutes and was then at the oldest Mazu temple in Northern Taiwan. Let me just say flat out, that the temple was HUGE.
The main parts of the temple that I found while exploring...
Underground Tunnels, with many Buddhist Gods and Goddesses
Here are some videos of locals praying!
A gorgeous garden behind the Temple with an amazing view
Views from the top of the Temple
In the first picture if you look REALLY closely and zoom in, you should be able to see Taipei 101 in the distance!
This was some kind of service that was happening? Not actually what it was for...
Step 2 of the day was traveling to Beitou. Again, this location was easily reachable by way of MRT. Beitou is a very tourist-y spot so they've got many places that you can check off of your traveling bucket-list. I'm confident in saying that I saw all of the places in Beitou that I wanted to see. Beitou was turned into a resort destination during the Japanese occupation, therefore it's most known for its Geothermal Hot Springs, and many tourist swimming pools.
My first stop in Beitou was to see the Public Library. En route to the library I had to stop and take pictures of a gorgeous lily pond garden.
My second location in Beitou was it's famous Geothermal Hot Springs (aka "Hell Valley). It honestly wasn't terrible. On my walk to the Valley, I also randomly walked into a group of 2019 Taipei Sister Cities Phoenix Ambassadors. It was interesting that I happened to walk into them in a city of nearly 3 million people.
My final destination in Beitou was to the Beitou Hot Spring Museum. The main piece from this museum was how sad I got when I saw the entire room of Tatami mats, that was when I got sad because I miss Japan.
My final destination of the day was the National Palace Museum of Taiwan 故宫博物院。I thought it was particularly interesting because in classes we were learning about the museum and then I was actually able to go visit the location I was learning in class.
This museum is an iconic Taipei spot, everyone goes to this museum.
The iconic item of the museum is the Jade Cabbage. For this museum, it is comparable to visiting the Mona Lise in Italy. Everyone comes to the museum simply too see that one item.
Everyone in the exhibit takes pictures of the Jade Cabbage, unfortunately miss the cabbage's neighbor "Meat Shaped Stone". The rest of the museum had many ceramic and bronze pots, bowls, and artifacts from Ancient Chinese times. A sentence from one of our lessons in my book from classes "故宮博物院有很多古代中國的東西。“ I naively didn't believe it at first, but after visiting the museum this is a T R U E statement. "故宮博物院有很多古代中國的東西", the "National Palace Museum (DOES) have very many ancient Chinese things." Nonetheless it was very interesting to see just how many ancient Chinese artifacts this museum had on display.
The first picture is a reflection in the glass of a display of Buddhist gods. The second are two ceramic cups, the one on the left showing the reflection of the cups outside decorations.
Some photos outside of the palace.
The day was exhausting with many places seen, but it was an exceptionally exciting day of sights! My next post will be equally eventful!
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