National Palace Museum 國立故宮博物院

The second day in Taiwan was another rainy day so we all headed to the National Palace Museum. The museum contains over 600,000 pieces of ancient Chinese artifacts and artwork. Click here for a virtual tour of some of the galleries. There is much to see throughout the three floors of the large museum. When we went, it was so crowded that we saw more people than exhibits!

A very small portion of the tour groups that had come to the museum that day!

We started with a free tour but quickly decided we wanted to go at our own pace and went off on our own.  Unfortunately we were unable to take pictures inside the museum.

Walking from the street to the museum grounds

just past the gate, headed toward the museum

The beautiful path we walked from the street to the museum entrance

taken from in front of the building on the side of the museum, looking toward the main building

I don't know who this statue is of

When we finished touring the museum it had just stopped raining so we walked around the small garden area next to the museum and ate lunch. The garden has a very minimal fee to enter, but is free with a museum ticket which cost NTD $250 (around $8 USD). You can also purchase a discounted combination ticket for other museums as well as to the Taipei 101 Observatory (though you may be only be able to purchase that at the observatory ticket counter).

The reason the bridge to the gazebo is crooked is because it was believed that evil spirits can only walk in a straight line

The fish were literally jumping out of the water to catch the food being thrown at them!

We next headed to Beitou to visit the Thermal Valley and relax at some hot springs. Pictures coming soon..
Read the summary of our first few days in Taiwan here!

National Palace Museum  國立故宮博物院
Location: Taipei, Taiwan
Transportation: Bus
Cost: NTD $250
Website: www.npm.gov.tw/en/

Hong Kong: Day 1

Once we got settled in, we made our way to Avenue of Stars for the light show. It runs every night at 8 and lasts about 10-15 minutes. If you get there a little early, you can catch a spot right up front by the river and not have a large crowd standing in front of you.

What is also cool is that, besides for many of the buildings (on both the Hong Kong and the Kowloon side) are part of lie light show, the cruises passing by are part of it too!

Avenue of Stars is located on the Kowloon side of the river & faces the Hong Kong side. To help you understand better, you can think of it as in the country Hong Kong there are different cities including Kowloon & Hong Kong.

After the show ended, there was another light show special for the week being projected onto the building next to us. This one was much more interesting and had really fun music.

When that ended, we had a lot of fun doing a photo shoot! (More pictures of that in a separate post)