I woke up at 7.30 as someone was up in the room. I felt tired but got up anyway, had a shower put on a shirt and paid for the room. I left I'm inn and decided not to do the walking tour and see some place instead, after all going to Taiwan and not seeing Tapei 101 would be bad so I headed in that direction and felt like listening to some music so I put some on but only the right headphone was still working so I used a headphone sharer plug and had 2 headphones which meant I had 2 right ears, fine for some songs but not the first one I played by Led Zeppelin. The walk was a reasonable distance and I came to a park with an ok view of the tapei 101 tower. There was a large building there which the map said was a memorial hall so I went in and it was for Sun Yat-Sen who had been the first democratic ruler of China in 1912 after finally leading a successful revolution. The place had a few floors of things to see and when I came down they were changing their guards in the main hall as it was 10am and there was quite a large crowd watching. I left and went to the Taipei 101 tower and the door was closed for entry until 11am so I walked around and got some more photos from the other side. The south side entrance was open so I went inand up to the 5th floor where a ticket to the top was 600 dollars so I gave it a miss and got a train to Shilin in the north. From there I walked to a park where they had a few small things to see and from there I climbed up a hill for the views which were ok but it was hazy over the city. I walked back down the other side heading south past the Grand hotel which was pretty big. Then I crossed the river and looked at a park near to a stadium before crossing the road to the art museum which only had one room open for free and it was for the 2016 Taiwan art competition, bit like the Turner prize. I left as it was getting on and tried to see 2 more museums but they turned out not to be museums which is the problem when you can't read what people have written. I was hungry so I bought 10 chicken nuggets fof 60 dollars at burger king but couldn't finish them before I got to the subway where you are not allowed to eat so I put them away and went south to the botanical gardens. There was some construction work in the gardens which were ok but nothing stood out. I finished the nuggets but spilt the barbecue sauce while I was checking the map which was annoying but luckily there was only a small stain on my sock - an advantage of wearing shorts. I tried to go to the national museum of history but I didn't have time as the tour started at 2pm and I was not going to get there on time anyway. So I joined the guys at the tour in time for the introductions and there were 6 people there from the day before. This time we had 3 tour guides who took it in turns starting with the 228 incident which happened on Feb 28th 1949. We also walked over some stones barefoot which is supposed to tell you which part of your body is ill. The stones hurt a bit, but a lot of people did it and it was pretty fun. Then we went round places and there were no big wow things that we saw. I bought some tofu on the way as I was hungry as usual and the others got a jelly drink and some ice cream. We were there for a while do I left to fill up my water at an underground station but when I came back they had moved on and there was one of the guides waiting for me. At the end of the tour I'd talked to some people about a national palace museum and googled it as apparently it had treasures from China they had moved here when the Country went communist. So I got the phone number of a guide so I could join them later for the pub crawl. I headed back past the botanical gardens to the history museum and paid the 30 dollars entry to walk through it fairly quickly. The place was ok, some Chinese art which I don't really get and some other things and I left with plenty of time still. The nearby memorial was shut from 5pm and I was going to go straight to the palace museum but decided to see a big park with a democracy boulevard down the middle. It was a good idea as the place was fairly important looking and had 2 big buildings and an arch one end and a memorial building with steps up the other. I got on the tube after and went back north to Shilin where I'd been earlier and caught a bus to the palace museum arriving around 6.30. I paid the entrance fee of 250 and had to put my bag in a locker but I took my camera with me which they said was ok. The ground floor had some furniture which I whizzed through and then some old treasures some of which looked quite special
There were 2 more floors with some ceramics (not surprisingly) and some brass and other objects. For some reason photos were not allowed past 6.30pm in one area or possibly the whole museum but I had already taken several. There was also some Chinese art some of which was ok. I finished up the whole place and the guide map showed a 2nd exhibition hall so I went there and it was closed, turns out it is used by special arrangement, but thankfully I didn't miss the bus and was soon back at Shilin station before 9pm. I used the wifi and got in touch with the tour guide who told me where they were so I headed there and arrived at 9.30 and I couldn't see them so I used the wifi there and found out where they'd moved to. I arrived and they were still getting drinks in and about to do sake shots but I found out it would be 500 for the few bars left and entry into a club. I didn't plan to stay that long so I gave it a miss and went back to the hostel as I had a morning flight and needed to be up early. I tried to organise my things before going to sleep.
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