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Taipei 3-Day Itinerary: Best Things to Do & Day Trips
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items A practical 3-day Taipei itinerary for a first trip to Taiwan - with two hotel options, a full first day in the city, four different ideas for a day trip, a slower third day through old Taipei, plus food and transport essentials. Expect imperial trea... It’s the Taipei I’d show someone who wants to see the famous things without spending three days seeing only famous things.
Sections
5
Before you go
Where to eat in Taipei
Day 1 in Taipei
Day 2 Trip outside Taipei
Day 3 in Taipei
Before you go
Buy this early and stop thinking about transport. MRT, buses, convenience stores and lots of small everyday payments become tap-and-go - possibly the least exciting recommendation on this list and one of the most useful.
EasyCard Taiwan
Taiwan makes much more sense when you also read the stories it tells about itself - fiction, memoir, family history, Indigenous writing and literature in translation.
Read Taiwan Before You Go → Taiwanese Books in Translation
A very good base for a short Taipei stay: central, easy to get around from, and those huge windows make waking up in the city considerably more interesting. If you can, go high floor - the view is half the point.
citizenM Taipei North Gate, Taipei (updated prices 2026)
For people who would like Taipei 101 to appear casually outside the bedroom window. Modern, unfussy and particularly good if city views rank suspiciously high on your hotel requirements.
amba Taipei Songshan, Taipei (updated prices 2026)
One from my own shop - and possibly the easiest conversation starter you can pack for Taiwan. The island outline is filled with mountain peaks inspired by the Taiwan 100 Peaks, so anyone who hikes is likely to recognize the reference. Wear it in Taiw...
Taiwan Mountain Peaks – Taiwan 100 Peaks Hiking Design Classic T-Shirt
One from my own shop - the outline of Taiwan filled with its mountain peaks, on a notebook that can become part travel journal, part trail notebook and part stamp collection. Taiwan is wonderfully good at stamps: train stations, visitor centers, muse...
Taiwan Mountain Peaks – Taiwan 100 Peaks Hiking Design Journal
Where to eat in Taipei
Not a complete Taipei food guide - just two very different experiences worth fitting into these three days: precisely folded xiaolongbao at Din Tai Fung and the glorious lack of a dining plan at Shilin Night Market.
Yes, it is famous. Yes, there may be a queue. I would still go at least once - partly for the xiaolongbao, partly for watching the astonishingly precise dumpling operation through the glass.
Din Tai Fung 101
Go hungry and without too much of a plan. The point is not to identify the single “best” thing to eat but to wander, queue where something smells good and build dinner out of a series of questionable decisions.
Shilin Night Market
Day 1 in Taipei
Day 1 does the Taipei classics properly: imperial treasures, monumental architecture, Taipei 101 and the skyline from Elephant Mountain - followed, quite reasonably, by an extremely pink Hello Kitty 7-Eleven. High culture to convenience-store culture...
Start with several thousand years of Chinese art before Taipei gets considerably taller and pinker later in the day. The collection is enormous, so do not approach it with the dangerous idea that you are going to “see everything.”
National Palace Museum Ticket in Taipei
One of those places where the scale makes more sense once you are standing inside it. Come for the architecture, the huge open square and a useful piece of Taipei’s twentieth-century history.
Liberty Square & Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall
Yes, it is the obvious Taipei thing. Do it anyway. The elevator is absurdly fast, the city suddenly becomes a model below you, and it gives you a useful sense of just how far you have been walking.
Taipei 101 Observatory Ticket
For the Taipei 101 view you actually want in the photo. Mostly stairs, briefly regrettable, completely worth it once the skyline appears - especially around sunset.
象山
Proof that in Taiwan even buying water can become a themed experience. Extremely pink, completely unnecessary and a useful reminder that Taipei’s convenience-store culture deserves its own sightseeing category.
Hello Kitty Sanrio 7-Eleven Store In Taipei, Taiwan Guide + ...
Day 2 Trip outside Taipei
Day 2 is a choose-your-own-adventure outside central Taipei. Pick dramatic rocks, waterfalls and Jiufen; the northeast coast; volcanoes and culture in Yangmingshan; or tea gardens and Maokong. One day, four very different versions of Taiwan.
Pick this one if it is your first trip and you want maximum Taiwan in one day: strange rock formations, mountain streets, waterfalls and lanterns, with somebody else dealing with the transport. Efficient sightseeing, but in a good way.
Option 1 - Yehliu Geopark, Jiufen, Shifen and Golden Waterfall Day Tour
The one for coastlines, colorful harbors and people whose camera roll is already becoming a logistical problem. Less “tick off the famous sights,” more spend the day chasing very photogenic corners of northern Taiwan.
Option 2 - Northeast Coast Instagram Tour in New Taipei
For the person who cannot decide between volcanoes and museums and therefore sensibly chooses both. Fumaroles and mountain scenery first, cultural treasures later. If you pick this option, swap the National Palace Museum on Day 1 for Lin An-tai Histo...
Option 3 - Taipei | Yangmingshan National Park & National Palace Museum Day Tour | Exploring the Treasures of Chinese Culture
My pick for a slower day. Tea gardens, a proper tea experience and the Maokong gondola — much less about collecting landmarks and much more about understanding why tea in Taiwan is an entire subject rather than just a drink.
Option 4 - Taipei Tea Culture Day Tour | Local Tea Garden Tea Ceremony Experience and Maokong Gondola
Day 3 in Taipei
Day 3 slows things down: old Taipei on Dihua Street, Taiwanese tea turned into chocolate at COFE, thousands of tiny lead characters at Ri Xing Type Foundry, Lungshan Temple - and a foot massage at the end because by now your step count has become per...
Old shopfronts, tea, dried goods, traditional medicine, design stores and cafés all occupying the same street without apparently finding this strange. One of my favorite places to see old and new Taipei negotiating with each other.
Dihua Old Street - traditional shopping and souvenir experience
Taiwanese tea, except someone turned it into chocolate. Exactly the kind of idea that sounds gimmicky until you taste it - and then becomes a very efficient souvenir problem.
COFE 喫茶 · 咖啡
One of my favorite Taipei rabbit holes: thousands of tiny lead Chinese characters in a working type foundry. Choose characters, choose a typeface, make something personal - and accidentally learn quite a lot about printing while you are there.
Ri Xing Type Foundry: Fresh Impressions of a Fading Legacy
Come after the shops and streets of old Taipei and suddenly the city slows down. Incense, offerings, elaborate roofs and people actually using the temple rather than simply visiting it - which is what makes it worth seeing.
Lungshan Temple
By Day 3 your feet will have developed opinions. This is the point at which a Taiwanese foot massage stops feeling like an indulgence and starts looking suspiciously like infrastructure.
256 Foot & Body Wellness Center (Taipei, Ximending)