Taipei Day 5

Today my agenda included visiting the National Palace Museum. It is located a bit north of where we are staying and is my first test of being able to get around more "like a local"....I had to take the subway, then hop a particular bus to get there. I'm happy to say (obviously since I lived to tell about it) I accomplished it with just one wrong turn.

Again, this is a massive structure - it houses a huge number of Chinese artifacts that were saved from destruction during upheaval in mainland China in the 1930's.  Here are the entrance gates - with part of the museum up the hill in the background.

The view from the top of the stairs - it's actually out in the hilly countryside although there are some fairly new apartment structures in the background.

Now, I went to the museum expecting to snap lots of photos - but the nice lady at the entrance made me check my camera into a storage area!  I guess I should have known that!

So, I only have my memories of the couple of hours I spend wandering the 4 levels of ever-changing displays.  (They have so much "stuff" that they change the items out regularly to keep people coming back).

I saw an enormous amount of pottery, Ming Dynasty vases, bronze statues and vessels, scrolls, the list goes on and on.  I think my favorites were the Ming vases - quite beautiful!

An item that is their "showcase item" is this "Cabbage with Insects" - very cool - but I liked the pottery better!  (image stolen from the internet).

I wandered thru a pretty park beside the museum....

A small boy was feeding the koi - they were huge!  (no wonder with small boys feeding them all the time!)

After the bus ride back to the subway station, I was hungry!  I chose this little "chicken" stand...seemed clean enough....

I just needed a little snack - two wings and a bottle of green tea - $2US.  The wings were tender and fabulous!

 One subway stop further and I wandered around until I found a grocery store...

Snapped some photos of weird stuff in the grocery store....

I would have gotten more photos but I think I was getting the attention of some of the attendants....so I gracefully left the building....

Sometimes the street scenes look just like any city at home...

And other times very foreign!

I did a good bit of "wandering" today. I walked about a mile in the busiest section of town I'd been in yet - trying to find a temple that I'd read about in a guidebook. I did eventually find it - ornate but squashed in between two little businesses. Oh well, I needed to work off the calories from the chicken wings!

I'm about pooped for the day - making my way back the mile to the sub-way - I traveled thru an interesting variety of shops spilling into the sidewalk with various foreign items, most of which I don't even recognize.

A cool fabric shop.

I'm about back to the subway and my feet are about to scream at me!

It's rush hour and this is 4 escalators full of folks transferring from one subway line to the other....notice how polite everyone is - they all stand to the side in case someone wants to walk up the escalator.  All for today!