Today was my first day in Taipei! I don't think it's hit me yet that I'm going to be traveling for the better part of a month.
I got in late last night and the weather was terrible until the afternoon today. My flight got in at about 22:30 so I got to my hostel at about midnight and went promptly to bed.
I had a bit of a slow morning before tagging along with my German roommate to go see Taipei 101, the tallest building in Taiwan. Unfortunately, due to the aforementioned rain and clouds, there was "zero visibility," so we didn't bother paying the ~20 USD to go up to the top. (If it's clearer later in the week maybe I'll go up there).
Instead, we sat and had coffee for a couple hours. When he met up with his friends, I went off to visit the Taipei Fine Art Museum. On the way there, I walked through a farmer's market and got some delicious sticky rice.
The Fine Art Museum was very beautiful. The one exhibit I went to was about female Taiwanese painters from 1930-1980. It showcased a number of different artists with dramatically different styles. I wasn't allowed to take pictures, and I'm actually having a very hard time finding pictures of their art online. I did find this picture of art by Swallow Lin, who went deaf at the age of six.
I'm not sure why, but wandering around this museum made me feel really happy. It felt good to not worry about anything for a while. The names of some of the other artists are at the end of this post.
The Fine Art Museum is in a pretty big park along the river, that I'd really like to go back and explore. It's pretty close to my hostel so I'm planning on wandering over there later this week.
After spending some time in my hostel, I met up with some people who were on Sabine's Fulbright Program, Fiona and Brian, and went to Cafe Sushi. It's a restaurant where there are a bunch of plates of sushi on a conveyor belt and they cost only 30 NT each (~ 1 USD). It was a delicious and inexpensive dinner.
It's nice to have some friends around, especially since the Hostel largely cleared out today. Hopefully I'll meet someone who wants to explore the Chiang Jai-Shek memorial with me tomorrow. Else, my company will be the audio version of the Economist.
Artists I especially liked at the Fine Art Museum
- Swallow Lin
- June Huang
- Li Chin-Chou
- Lii Jin-Shiow
- Y.J. Cho
- Chen Hsing-Wan
- PO Ying Ping