We started our day with the long train ride to Taipei Zoo. The Taipei Zoo is the last stop of the Brown line. Again, it’s really convenient that they name and place their train stops right nearby famous or tourist landmarks which really helps in navigating our way around.

Another good thing was that we can pay the entrance to the zoo using our train pass! The zoo fee is really minimal. It’s been a while since I have gone to a proper zoo (I think the last time was on a school fieldtrip before 2010?) so I was a little excited. I’m not really that much of a fan of zoos because I’ve had various horrifying experiences with animals. The Taipei zoo promised pandas though, so off we go.

To say that the zoo is huge is an understatement. It was huge and you can really feel how huge it was. We wanted to see pandas first so we made that the first thing in our agenda. The panda visit was rather disappointing! The panda wanted alone time and had its back on us. I think the came we came was not the prime time for the pandas to be awake.

We walked around some more, seeing a lot of animals along the way. I like that the try to keep each animal’s habitat as close to their natural one as possible and that the animals aren’t that cramped. The way the “cages” are designed doesn’t make it look like the animals are trapped.

I don’t think we managed to fully go around the zoo. There was a lot of people, especially children on field trips. We pretty much just walked all the way to the penguins then decided to go back to ride a gondola to Maokong.

It’s my first time to ride a cable car. I’m a huge fan of ferris wheels so cable cars don’t really scare me. I do enjoy heights, but there was a slight worry that might body might get nauseous. The ride going to Maokong was about 30 minutes? We shared the gondola ride with two other people. It was a really clear day which showed really excellent views of Taipei from above.

We didn’t really have any actual itinerary or plans on what to do in Maokong. When we got there, we decided to eat at the convenience store and picked up items based on Strictlydumpling’s video on Taiwan 7/11 (although the convenience store at the station is not a 7/11). We were only getting lunch but it ended up being sort of a full meal. After that, we decided to just kind of walk around the place and see where it would take us. Since it’s known to be a tea mountain, most of the restaurants around it serve tea, but since we were so full from our snack we just walked around.

We went back to the city to watch The Crimes of Grindelwald. It was the first day of showing and I have been looking forward to it. On our way back, there was line for the regular car or the car with a glass floor. We opted for the latter. We were pretty lucky because we were at the back of the line and suddenly they started asking for two people, and we volunteered so we got in. It was a quick wait.

We decided to watch the Crimes of Grindelwald in Miramar Entertainment Park. We saw it in iMAX 3D, which is a first time for me. They also seat people automatically in cinemas and we got the middle seats which was really good. I really enjoy watching cinemas abroad just to see how their cinemas are different from the ones here. The cinema in Taipei is smaller in size but pretty much everything seemed the same.

The Miramar Entertainment Park also had the ferris wheel which I sadly skipped on. It was a bit too cold, and I was extremely full and just wanted to go home. We were supposed to go back to it another day but we never had the chance to go back.