After a simple breakfast at the hotel, we headed to Shuang Lian Station (雙連站) to top-up our Easy Card (悠游卡). We had our 悠游卡 with NT50 in it as gifts from the Taiwan Tourist Association for visitors to Taiwan. After that, we took the MRT to Yuanshan Station (圆山站）which is walking distance to the Flora Expo.
As the MRT approaches Yuanshan Station, we could see the crowd from the MRT. It was so crowded. When we alighted from the MRT, there were staff to direct Flora Expo visitors to another exit. We followed the crowd and then joined the queue and can you believe it, the queue was from the main extrance of the expo all the way to the end of the Yuanshan Station.
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| Seriously, the queue is crazy!!! |
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| Can you even see the entrance? |
As this entrance was terribly crowded and we heard from the expo staff that there is another entrance about 10mins down the road, we decided to proceed there. True enough, it was less crowded but there is still a queue.
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| That's the short queue but where is the entrance? |
After a short queue, we were in the park and again 人山人海. Is everyone trying to rush for the expo before it ends???? One can't help wondering, don't they need to work????
The expo is divided into four major areas: Yuanshan Park, Taipei Artist Park, Xinsheng Park and Dajia Riverside Park. It has 14 pavilions and occupies an area of 91.8 hectares (0.918 km2). Each area is also covered with many outdoor gardens, including a Global Garden Area (featuring exhibits from around the world), a Fujian-Style Garden, and a Sea of Flowers. In addition, it features more than 800 varieties of orchids, 329 million locally-developed plant varieties, and award-winning landscape and gardening designs from 22 countries.
The first pavilion that we came across was 真相館. We saw signboards indicating that this place is distributing entrance passes 8.00pm. My god!!! It is just 10am+ now and they are already distributing for 8pm and that is 10 hours later. We decided to give it a miss and proceeded on. Then we came to the 花區 and had a short break as the weather is getting warm. It's flower flower everywhere.
We continued our flower exploration journey after the short break and saw all the domes full of people. Frankly speaking, I may have queued 2 hours to enter Mickey Mouse House in Disneyland but I don't think I want to queue to see the domes. In the end we gave up about entering the domes, instead we spent our time enjoying the beautiful flowers on exhibit.
The heat was getting to us by noon and then hunger. We went in search of food and once again it was crowded. Without much choice, we packed our lunch and ate it by the bench.
After lunch, we walked for another hour or two before hitting the street and headed for the famous Shilin Night Market (士林夜市). 豪大大鸡排 and 珍珠奶茶 here we come!!!!! We took the MRT from Yuanshan to Jiantan station (剑谭站). Remember NEVER NEVER alight at Shilin Station (士林站).
It was almost dinnertime when we reached Shilin, however we went to do some shopping as we were still full from the late lunch. I went to 天蓝小铺 (Sky Blue) where you can buy nice and cheap bags. Then we proceeded to Tokyo Fashion Boutique (東京著衣) where my sister always buy her clothes online. Then it started to rain...........! A big spoiler. It started with big droplets of rain till never ending downpour.
Frustrated with the rain, we decided to go for dinner with the hope that it will stop. We walked around the makan area of Shilin and settled down with western cuisine.
Guess what! The rain did not stop after our dinner. As we are almost 80% soaked, we gave up and headed back to the hotel for an early night. Can you imagine it was only 8pm! =(
