A Night At The Museum

National Palace Museum @ Taipei

National Palace Museum @ Taipei

Adventures in Taipei, Taiwan – This was way back in October of 2019. It was already late in the afternoon. Perhaps around 5:30PM-ish as I recall. We were already running a bit late from our supposed scheduled trip to the Taiwan National Palace Museum on that day. Yes, just a bit. That’s Filipino standard for an hour or something, in case you didn’t know! Well the good thing is that it was a DIY tour of Taipei city, so everything was up to us and there were no tourist guides or bus drivers prodding us to hurry up. Plus, it was just the second day. The museum location is not within walking distance from the closest MRT station just to note. We boarded a bus that took us to the museum after going on a short walk around in circles. Took us some time to get on one. We knew which buses to take (Google is always helpful) but somehow I think we ended up waiting at the wrong stop. The good thing was that by our calculations we still had more than an hour before the museum closed its gates.

The night was a bit cold and a little wet from the rain that day. It was still raining when we left the nearest MRT station at the foot of the Elephant Mountain. Unfortunately, and that sucked, due to the weather conditions that afternoon, we could not hike up this famous path in Taipei to make it up to the top. Would have loved to see a view of the city from that vantage point. They say the view is great. Too bad. (Well, maybe some other day? Yeah, definitely.)

National Palace Museum archway @ Taipei

National Palace Museum archway @ Taipei

Oh, right. If I am not mistaken, the site of the Elephant Mountain in Taipei is at the southern-most end of the Red Line MRT. While the National Palace Museum is on the other end of that line up north. It took several minutes to travel from one end to the other, hence, one of the reasons why we were late. And the rain hampered us earlier too. Of course, commuting in Taipei is easy. Their trains are efficient and always on time. (Well, try doing this in Manila and making it there with time to spare. You couldn’t. Hah!).

So the ending was that, we got there. Duh, obviously! Although we still had time to go into the museum, we decided not to. We almost did. On hindsight maybe it was best that we didn’t push through with it. They were gonna close soon. An hour probably would not be enough to take it all in. Some photo ops outside had to suffice. Though night has come and dark it was outside, we were not to be denied again even for just this one. Luckily for us the rain had already stopped.

Moral of the story is that it would have been more productive if we had chosen to go somewhere nearby.

It was “a night at the museum” that really was not.

Next stop – Shilin Market.

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Notice: This article was published on March 12, 2020 and the content above may be out of date.
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