Our night sleep could have been better, as the Taipei city lights shine bright into our apartment. At 5:30, Tim decides the night is over, and packs his bag to leave for some morning light in the mangroves.
It’s a 40 minute metro ride to Hongshulin where you can walk through the mangrove along the Tamsui estuary. It’s crawling with crabs and Tim spots the mudskippers we missed on our boat tour, sadly no special birds are spotted although there is a cacophony of sounds.
When Tim left, he woke up the rest of the family who spent the morning in bath.
Tim is back at 8, and we leave at 8:30 for a metro and bus ride to the National Palace Museum, which has one of the biggest collections of Chinese art in the world – in 1948, valuable artefacts from the palace museum of the forbidden city in Bejing (and some other locations in China) were shipped to Taiwan to safeguard them from possible threats during the fights between the communist and nationalist.
We see beautiful Buddhist art, metal work, ceramics, carvings, paintings and books/documents. Not everything we see is to our taste, and some of the most promising items are at display in their southern branch in Taibao, but both children fell asleep and strolling through the big collection at our own pace and with full attention is a true gift.The children wake up in the final room, so Olga heads downstairs to the children museum, while Tim finishes the room of metalwork on his own and enjoys some much needed rest with a liter of tea at the top floor after his intense night and morning excursion.
In the children museum, Olga meets a Dutch family who lives in Taiwan for four years. Their children (aged 9-11) are very negative about the migration, but they do share the promising tip of taking the 4 KM long Maokong Gondola over the Taiwanese jungle.
We change our schedule from temples to gondola and take the bus to the metro stop. There, we first have lunch, before we continue our 1hr metro trip crossing Taipei to the start of the Gondola. luckily, we have brilliant places in the first cabine of the metro ensuring good distraction both for us and the children as the front of the metro is a big window so we can see the tracks and the city passing by.
We arrive at the gondola. As we want to go all the way, we choose the Chrystal cabins with a glass floor. You can exit the gondola at four different stops, but we go the full 4KM straight to the top, enjoying the views around and below us.
When we exit the gondola at the very top, we first share a green tea icecream. Then we take a nice walk enjoying the stunning view over Taipei and crossing the jungle. We see many different plants, flowers and butterflies (that are extremely difficult to capture as they move so quickly).
We don’t necessarily want a cabin with a glass floor again, but as a big tour group is waiting in the line of the normal cabins, we don’t need to wait much longer for the crystal cabin (1 in 5 cabins had a glass floor, so you have to wait longer for crystal cabins), so we take it again. And luckily we do, because Tim spots a monkey eating in a tree! We have 2 seconds to capture it on our camera’s:
We exit at the temple stop half way as well, where Tim takes a stroll and Cleo, Zeno and Olga stay close to the station to watch turtles in a pond.
We’re back at 17, so time to head for dinner. We’re lucky again with our metro seats, again at the very front of the train.
We have a nice Vietnamese dinner, and are back home at 19. As Cleo loves going out to the city at night, Cleo and Olga do some simple grocery shopping to buy some fruit and oatmeal, before going to bed. Tim is still, after 6 intense weeks, unstoppable and continues with his bonus programme to make night pictures of Taipei.
We feel so blessed to spent this huge adventure together, and we had another great day to add to our memories. It’s so nice to spent so much time together, bond even more as a family and explore other countries and cultures together. We cannot wait to see what the next days will bring!
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