Taipei
Like a giraffe in a shower, it's big and it's wet
Posted by: Josh, 16 January 2026
Rewarding to travellers willing to venture down every side street until they find the places that call most to them, Taipei is an atmospheric and interesting place to start a journey around Taiwan.
There's a huge amount to do inside the city, whatever your interests may be, and good transport links for day trips into the surroundings hills and down to the Northern coast.
Sure does rain a lot though.
Contents
What to do in Taipei
The National Palace Museum made for a great activity on our first full day in Taiwan, packed as it is with Chinese and Taiwanese artifacts and English translations for each one that I can recall. We got there at midday – thanks, jetlag – so only had five hours to explore before closing time but were helped by the absence of any queues for tickets.
It’s full of Chinese and Taiwanese objects and artwork, and taught us a huge amount about the country we were about to spend the next few weeks exploring. Highlights include the extraordinarily detailed sculptures of braised pork and a jade cabbage, along with far too many artworks and calligraphy displays to mention. There’s a traditional garden to wander round outside too – even in the tropical storm that greeted us on arrival in Taipei. Buses are busy at closing time.
No, this picture isn't out of focus. That's just all the raindrops.
Yingge Pottery district and Yingge Ceramics Museum are the go-to spots in Taipei for pot heads, and for plate heads, mug heads and tea set heads looking for a fix too (**Liz note: Josh, delete this**). While we enjoyed the museum, we loved strolling along Yingge Old Street and stopping in almost every shop we saw in search of a new set of bowls or plates to take home. It’s a joy to explore all the different types of pottery on offer – from the cheap but still very appealing mass-produced wares to the decorative pottery in galleries that might set you back more than you earn in a few months.
After several hours of shopping, we finally settled on a delicate and simple looking bowl, hand-painted in brown and other earthy tones. Our hopes of bringing home a pair were foiled at the last when the shop owner revealed it was a 1 of 1, with no similar ones available. We sensibly decided not to settle for our second choice on the day because…
…after striking out in Yingge the day before, we finally found some pottery to take home with us in the very last shop we visited on Dihua Street. A historic road in the Dadaocheng area, Dihua Street is known for its market stalls and shops – most of which you’ll find selling tea, spices, mushrooms and other food stuffs. There are some lovely cafes, clothes shops, a small temple, and plenty of restaurants in the area too.
Taipei’s Botanical Garden is best visited when the Lotus Pond is fully in bloom in the summer months, from June to August. It’s still a nice place to walk throughout other parts of the year, even with the edge of a tropical storm hanging overhead, and a hugely popular spot for birdwatchers. We found an enormous crowd gathered in one area to take photos of – we think – a Scops Owl on our visit.
Taipei Botanical Garden was a beautiful and tranquil place to escape the busy streets, even in autumn. Just make sure to visit the lotus pond in summer before the plants start to die back.
There are a surprisingly good number of hiking opportunities around Taipei, some of which are easily reached and completed in half a day or less. Accessible via bus from the Metro station near Taipei Zoo, to the South of the city in Maokong are several lovely tea houses with hiking spots nearby.
A big draw for many visitors is Taipei 101, once the world’s tallest building but now a lousy 11th place at a mere 508 metres tall. We skipped it due to the cost and bad luck with the weather, as by all accounts you won’t see much when it's loudy and raining. For a cheaper alternative to Taipei 101, New Taipei City Hall in Banqiao has a 32nd floor viewing deck.
As you’d expect for the capital city, Taipei is very well connected to the rest of Taiwan. Click the links below for more info on any of the below ideas for a day trip from Taipei.
Jioufen: Famous for its tea houses and picturesque location in the mountains near Taiwan’s northern shore. We had very different opinions of our time here.
Houtong cat village: A former mining town now more famous for its feline residents. Worth a visit for its scenery and mining museum while making your way to or from Jioufen, even if you’re not a cat person.
Wulai: A town known for its hot springs and for a cute railway line that takes you from the bottom end of town to the waterfalls higher up the hill.
Taichung: If you don’t have time to stay a few nights in Taichung and explore it fully, consider taking the high-speed rail train for a day out of Taipei. Searching “what to do in Taichung” didn’t raise our expectations for Taiwan’s second most populous city, but we ended up really enjoying a layover here on our way back from Sun Moon Lake to Taipei.
Wulai: Extra atmospheric after heavy rain.
What we didn't do
And where to read about it
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Chiang Kai-Shek Memorial Hall is a spectacular building not far from Taipei Main Station. While we were able to admire the outside, we didn’t wander in. Snap Happy Travel have pictures and all you need to know in their helpful two-day itinerary for a stay in Taipei.
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Day trip to Keelung. Reddit is usually better as a source of anxiety than of recommendations, but this page has a few. One Redditor even suggests some sushi spots you might want to try, which this vegetarian couldn't ever provide you.
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Taipei Zoo. According to Taipei’s tourism board, it’s the largest zoo in South-East Asia. While I’d generally be uncomfortable visiting many zoos, and I can’t personally speak to the quality of the enclosures here, they undoubtedly have a role to play in wildlife conservation – including, here, work to increase the population of Taiwan’s endangered leopard cats.
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Beitou Hot Springs Museum. We settled instead for a trip to Wulai as it offers less crowded walking opportunities and hot springs with less of a sulphurous whiff to them.
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Day trip to Yangminshan. One of the places we most regret being unable to visit; the effects of two tropical storms bookending our visit to Taiwan meant we ruled this trip out. Read about it on Walk My World.
Where to eat and drink
Read our tips on food and drink in Taiwan on our What to Know Before you Go post
I’ll do this as briefly as possible (self-editor's note: I meant this when I wrote it), since Taipei has an excellent food scene and we couldn’t possibly hope to sample it all. These are just a few places we really liked while we were there.
Night Market food
Of the night markets we visited, Ningxia Night Market was our favourite for providing consistently good versions of night market classics. It’s a smaller market and far less tourists visit it than some of the more famous ones. The best scallion pancake we had on our holiday – and, believe me, we're experts now – came from a stall at the end furthest from Dihua Street.
As Tina Turner might have said, Good Friend's cold noodles were simply "river deep" with flavour
Shilin Night Market has a couple of places in the Michelin Guide, one which we’d recommend and one which you can skip, according to Liz. Good Friend Cold Noodles is worth the hype; their vegetarian sesame noodles were the best noodle dish I had in Taiwan. They were only 60 NT$ (£1.40) for a portion, meaning you can and must go back for seconds. Liz and I have been trying to recreate the delicate balance of citrus and heat underneath the light and creamy sesame flavour since we got back. We’ll stick a recipe on the site if we ever get close to it.
Bib Gourmand-recommended Shengjianbao let me down by being non-vegetarian and then let Liz down a little bit less by being only good, not great.
Also at Shilin Market is a small, dried tofu stall called Wu Family’s Tofu (search 吳家豆干 on Google Maps). It’s 100NT$ (around £2.35) for a big grab bag of different snacks, most of which taste very similar but come with very different textures. Thanks to Nick Kembel’s Taiwan Obsessed site for that recommendation.
Ximending night market was the hardest place to find good food of the ones we visited. It’s a different type of area – more modern, more music playing, more familiar in feel to parts of some cities you might visit in Japan or South Korea but I didn't find it to have the same charm. If you find yourself craving a bit more light and sound from your city break, you might enjoy this area more than I did.
Coffee, tea and cakes
Taipei is one of the best cities you can visit for consistently good coffee, rendering it almost pointless to spend any my time writing recommendations for the places we enjoyed the most.
So here we go:
Perfect Days coffee near Dihua Street is very cute, with plants outside the door and an equally pleasing interior. A tiramisu croffle and two coffees cost us 520NT$ (around £12.30). Recommended for those who like their coffee strong.
Sidoli Radio in Datong cost 170NT$ (around £4.10) for a cappuccino and a similar amount for the croissants. Recommended for those who like their coffee smooth and their menus placed inside an old cassette tape box. I’d pretend to be annoyed at the theme if I happened upon a place like this in London but – keep it a secret – I loved it.
16.67 Coffee in Zhongzheng District I'd recommend to people who really know their coffee, more than I would to sugar fiends like me. It’s close to the Main Station and 228 Memorial Park, and has a big variety of coffee beans to choose from. It was busy when we visited around breakfast time on a weekday.
On our day exploring south of Taipei, we stopped for a rest at Mei-Jia Tea Garden. We were served delightfully fresh tea alongside a substantial main course. The whole experience, from the walk down from the bus stop in the rain to relaxing with a warm cup of tea overlooking the hillside, was wonderfully peaceful. Our pot of tea cost 300NT$ (just over £7) for one of the priciest options on offer – much cheaper than you’ll find in any of the most popular spots in Jioufen.
Dinner
I’m hoping you can do us a favour here and leave more recommendations for your favourite restaurants in the comments.
Ours was Serenity, a Michelin Bib Gourmand-recommended vegetarian restaurant serving excellent Sichuan food at very reasonable prices. For four dishes, plus rice, we spent just over 1800NT$ (around £45). This was a bit of a splurge given how cheap street food is in Taiwan, but the food was genuinely delicious and so worth the money. The service was also great and Liz was thrilled with the brown sugar mochi we were served to end our meal on a sweet note.
Din Tai Fung: Maybe we didn't order their best dishes?
We also checked out Din Tai Fung, a famous xiaolongbao chain. We waited for over an hour to be seated but we were able to preorder our food before we sat down and were served quickly once inside. Liz enjoyed the meat xiaolongbao but thought they weren’t quite as good as the 17NT$ (7p each!) ones she had in Hualien. I found the vegetarian options lacking in flavour.
Given the waiting time and the amount of quality food elsewhere, I can’t personally recommend it. But given how many people seem to love this place, you might decide it’s worth checking out just to see what the fuss is all about – and, who knows, perhaps you’ll have a different experience. Din Tai Fung has branches all over Taipei, Taiwan and beyond – there’s even four branches in London. A basket of 10 pork xiaolongbao will set you back 280NT$ (around £6) in Taipei, whereas you’ll shell out £18.50 (784NT$ – after a hundred of these, it's fun to do it the other way round) to try them in London instead.
Help a fellow traveller out
It’s easy to find good food in Taipei, whatever your budget. We didn’t have the money to go mad ticking off every Michelin-starred spot in town, but you could spend a long time doing so if you have the budget.
But we tended to find that we got good food no matter which restaurant we fell into, once we’d got into the rhythm of checking that vegetarian options were available.
If you do find a place that stands out, please take a few seconds to let us and other readers know below.
This restaurant next to a temple on Dihua Street was the first place we ate in Taiwan. For not much money, we ate a good amount of simple and tasty vegetarian dishes. We came back to shop on Dihua Street on our final day in Taiwan.
Getting there
Read more about public transport in Taiwan on our What to Know Before you Go post
Fly in through Taipei Taoyuan International Airport and take the Metro into the city. The directions in the airport are simple to follow and written in English.
EasyCards, which are contactless payment cards that work on many forms of public transportation, can be bought for 500NT$, (which includes a 100NT$ deposit, plus 400NT$ in credit) at the entrance to the Metro station. As you’ll find in many places in Taiwan, you’ll need cash.
I won't list all the train and bus routes into Taipei from other cities here, but safe to say it's very well connected to the rest of the country.
Train information can be reliably found on Google. For bus times, Taiwan Bus is the go-to website.
Useful tips
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Bring all your waterproofs! I couldn't find a reliable figure for how many days a year it rains in Taipei, but it's certainly quite a lot of them. We were particularly unlucky to be in the midst of the edges of tropical storms on arrival in October and again during our second stay before leaving in November, but Taipei attracts a fair amount of rain throughout the year.
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Think about whether you're looking for the best atmosphere or the best food when picking your night market. Our favourite for quality of food was a bit lacking in atmosphere, while the ones best for atmosphere - Shilin or Xinmending - weren't as consistently good for food. The sesame noodles at Shilin really are worth the trip alone though.
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If you enjoy a museum, budget more time for the Palace Museum than some other guides recommend. I could have spent all day there.
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Actually, that's not a bad tip for a lot of places in Taipei - or elsewhere in Taiwan. Liz and I move at a slower pace than a lot of tourists, since we're both very happy to stop and spend a few minutes admiring and talking about one thing that's caught our eye or another, and we found ourselves running out of time to do everything we'd planned on our travels here. Setting aside an extra hour for a second pot of tea in the hills south of the city, or more time to wander down all of Taipei's side streets and alleys, will pay off more often than not.
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This being a large and more diverse city than some other places you'll visit in Taiwan, you're less likely to get caught out by early restaurant closing times in Taipei. You'll have more choice if you eat early, but you'll still have options if you prefer to eat a bit later.
Final thoughts on Taipei
Liz's final thoughts
Like a lot of big cities, Taipei sometimes felt busy and crowded. Some of the buildings were a little run down in places and it was raining heavily for 90% of the time we were there. Nonetheless, I still found it to be quite charming.
Most streets have covered walkways to keep you out of the rain, with open shop fronts inside so you can browse as you walk. One minute you find yourself surrounded by intriguing baskets of medicinal herbs, and the next you’re in a bubble tea shop or a ceramics store. Many shop owners also line their porches with potted plants, adding some greenery to the city streets.
Like Josh, I think I would still choose Khaosiung over Taipei if I had the choice, but that’s mostly just because I loved the easy access to nature and sunny, tropical feel of it. I’d still be happy to return to Taipei if I had the chance. Given a bit of sunshine and the right choice of neighbourhood, I think it could really shine.
Josh's final thoughts
There’s a lot to recommend about Taipei, with its good food and coffee, a fantastic museum, and good connections to more rural areas that appeal more to me than big cities often do.
My first week here coincided with a period of the trip where I was struggling with anxiety-related issues. If this is something you deal with too, or worry that you might, you can read a little more about my experiences of anxiety while travelling.
When we came back to Taipei after exploring other parts of Taiwan, I was able to enjoy the city a lot more. It has a huuge amount of character, with interesting architecture in older parts of the city and some narrow streets that looked particularly atmospheric after heavy rain. I didn't love Taipei as much as Kaohsiung, but I'd still gladly visit again if I ever have chance.
Pack your waterproofs. All of them.
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