Buses, Taxis, and Underground Trains

Monday May 6
Today was a day of exploration and adventure.  We started off by taking city bus 645 to Tianmu.  From our apartment location, it took us about an hour to reach our destination. Taking a bus across a large city is a great way to see it. Because of the mountain ranges,  this bus meanders through a wide array of neighborhoods, businesses, and even a fairly large medical complex.  Public housing, middle class apartments, expensive high rise apartments, condos, and single unit homes offered a good example of available housing.    We traveled around mountains and through mountains.   All this and we never left the metropolis of Taipei.  We knew we had arrived at our destination when we reached the Tianmu baseball stadium.

We walked around a little and saw why this area is known as the expat's neighborhood :  all types of ethnic restaurants lined the streets.  A 12-story mall across the street from the stadium offered everything you might need to furnish your home away from home,  as  well as all the clothing and shoes you might need.  Jason's Gourmet groceries offered a good selection of foods from other countries.   After lunch at the mall's food court, we took a  cab to the National Palace Museum.  Same as last year, the driver tried to drop us off at the bottom of the endless steps to the palace.



Although this is a great photo op, we asked to be dropped off at the main entrance doors at the top of the stairs.   There is so much history in this one building but sadly we have not been able to see much of it.  The tour groups are non -stop all over the place--mostly Chinese from the mainland. We did our souvenir shopping and went for tea at the restaurant at the top of the museum.

After tea, we asked the girl at the information desk to call a cab and stepped outside to wait for it. There was a city bus at the bus stop and we decided to try our luck getting back on public transportation.   Bus 30 went by the Shilin Metro Station which we found by following a group of students that also got off the bus at the same stop. By this time it had started to rain pretty hard so we walked under storefront awnings and then pulled out an umbrella for the walk across the street and to the station. Taipei's metro is easy to figure out and the locals are so courteous that it isn't too difficult to get around even at rush hour. My husband assures me that this is not the case in ither cities around the world, but my experience at the two largest cities in Taiwan, Taipei and Kaohsiung, gives me confidence in metro traveling here.

city buses come in all colors

comfortable bus seats

The easy card for buses and subways

metro station

young and old on the subway

Taipei taxi

 We changed lines at Main Station,  got off at our station, Nangang  Exhibition Center, and took a taxi home.  Our darling daughter was waiting for us with a dinner of homemade tamales, guacamole, tortillas, and chorizo with egg--a good meal to enjoy while we told her what we had done with our day.