Our last day in Taipei was one of contrasts – we decided to spend part of our last day in Taiwan to escape into the nearby countryside and then return to explore some of the city’s most important sights (both cultural and pop-cultural).
Category Archives: explore
A quick tour of Taipei – day one
Escape eat explore has suffered from a serious lack of attention while I focused on revision, but there’s lots to share from my pre-exam holiday to Japan and Taiwan and revision breaks so expect a flurry of posts! First up, our brief sojourn in Taipei.
Petra
As the history geek in me is still alive and well, one of the main draws of Jordan for me was Petra…Southern Jordan’s most dramatic cultural and archaeological sight, famous for lavish buildings carved into the rock. One of the seven wonders of the world, Petra definitely lived up to it’s reputation for me…I was totally mesmerised by the temples and buildings punctuating the dramatic natural landscape.
A Jordanian road trip
Although you can fly from one end of Jordan to another, there are so many phenomenal sights packed into this tiny country that I couldn’t recommend a leisurely road trip more. There are three roads in Jordan, the slowest of which – the King’s Highway – is by far the most spectacular.
Dreamily drifting on the Dead Sea
A trip to Jordan has long been on my bucket list so I used the fact that the boy is living in the Middle East as an excuse to organise a short trip while I was out there visiting. Thinking that Jordan must be a hop, skip and a jump from Dubai I swiftly booked onward flights only to realised that Jordan is actually pretty equidistant from Dubai and the UK…clearly I’m not as geographically-minded as I thought! Having made this slight error I set about being more organised about our time there and planned a full itinerary…first stop the Dead Sea.
Madrid – the insider’s guide
A couple of years ago one of my closest friends lived in Madrid for a period of time but as I was living in Tokyo at that stage I didn’t get the chance to visit. Luckily, she was really keen to return to her old haunts and a group of us decided to head there for a long weekend.
Sleepy snow monkeys
I think it’s fair to say that Japan is not generally known for its fauna. However, there was one animal that I knew I wanted to see before I moved back to the UK – the snow monkeys of Nagano.
Trekking up Mount Takao
I think I could safely bet that when the average visitor thinks of Tokyo their first thought is not of hiking up a mountain. And yet, within the wider boundaries of Japan’s amazing capital is the wonderful oasis of nature that is Mount Takao…a hidden gem not to be missed.
Escape to the mountains – a weekend in Kamikochi
As Kamikochi, in the northern Japanese Alps, is closed for half the year due to winter weather we made sure to slot in a weekend trip to this beautiful mountainous area before the roads were closed.
Nikko
The city of Nikko, nestled among the mountains of the Tochigi Prefecture, boasts beautiful natural surroundings and a plethora of UNESCO World Heritage shrines and temples. And being only a couple of hours from Tokyo, a trip out to this city is definitely worth adding to the destination list.