Day 5: National Palace Museum...

~18th March 2014~

At the entrance gate....

We strike-off the plan to visit Chiang Kai-Shek's Memorial so we tried to keep to at least one historical place to visit. The National Palace Museum, a place where all tourists would go. Yeah, it was a place where ALL tourists would go and the number of tourists were scarily calculated by the thousands per day. The hot weather wasn't helping either. How did we get here without following a tour group? Actually I have all the public bus numbers printed with the routes that the buses would use. Maybe we could hop off along the way. Enough said, we ended up opting to travel like an ignorant foreigner. We just hopped onto the yellow cab that we could get and told the driver where we wanted to go. Worry about the fare later. We have lots of cash, so no worries, okie?

Extremely hot weather~!

I was very agitated to leave the place. There were just too many people and we couldn't stand the crowd. You must be thinking that we are terrible selfish tourists who only wanted the whole place to ourselves. Nah... don't think such way. We just do not like crowded area but blame it on the hot weather. We weren't prepared for the humid and hot weather. Back at home, I wouldn't leave the house. I start working from the morning and by the time my work hours ended, it was just two hours before the grandfather's clock chimed 12 times to let the world know that another new day has started. So, even though I'm from a hot and humid country which rains every few days, I'm totally not used to walking under the sun.

Crowd and more crowd.... 

There were three different parts of the National Palace Museum if I remembered correctly. I really wanted to visit the garden with a lake. I have an odd fascination for Chinese-styled gardens with an arch structure as the pedestrian bridge with a small hut at the end of the bridge. Really love that kinda scene but in such scorching hot spring afternoon, I wasn't the only want eager to get away from this place. Who else wanted to go off? Bingo~! Mi mama and mi travel buddy~! That means all three of us wanted to leave! No big problem. 

Hot... hot... hot.... hot...

I am serious when I tell you it's hot. Pinky wanted to faint under the sun but we were trying to make our trip worth it. It was air-conditioned inside and we wanted to purchase the tickets but before that we asked the lady manning the counter what was in store for us to see. According to the lady, they were all old relics and antiques. Okay... I'm okay with museums but I just have no interest in anything written in Chinese and Chinese relics were something that I do not know how to appreciate. And I don't bother to read even if there were any English explanations. That would take forever to read from one corner to another.

What's that building?

While taking photos, I was aware of the building up on the hill opposite the National Palace Museum. I would be interested to get to that building. Right until now, I'm still wondering what's that place?

The regrets of being an ignorant tourist...

And due to my ignorance to read such a big print on the wall, I missed out the most wonderful exhibition on the first floor of the building *literally banging head on wall now*. I was just editing the photo of the National Palace Museum building taken from another building, so I was checking out the noise level of the photo and that one click proved to be heart-stopping when I saw the word 'Jerusalem'. Now that I've checked out through the Internet what was it about the Enigma of M.C.Escher, I am banging my head again and again. How could I not see such a huge print plastered on the wall? How could I be so blind? And I only see this now.... why?!!?! *wailing*

The National Palace Museum...

You see that big wall of information? I just accidentally clicked on that and now that I even cropped it out, the writing was clear, not a tiny bit blur. I should be proud of the camera's ability but why only I see it now? Did you know what we did there the whole time?

Photo to prove that we landed there...

We spent an hour or so, taking photos from the outside of the building. Why on earth did the woman just said that there will be old antiques. Yeah, I know the works of M.C. Escher on exhibits were from the 1960 - 70s, but at least they weren't the relics of some Chinese dynasty~! Why, oh why~! What else was missing in that trip? Next round, I'm going into any museum that I come across~! Or any banners or streamers hung outside a building will be read, every single word.