3 Days in Taipei and Beyond
Three days is our 2-day north coast plan plus Tamsui, the easiest day trip on this whole list since it needs no bus transfer at all. Most people spend all three days orbiting Taipei 101 and call it a Taiwan trip; this itinerary treats the city as a half-day chore and everything after that as the point. For the deep in-city version with no day trips, see our 3-day Taipei itinerary .
Book these before you go:
- Your Taipei hotel : base yourself centrally since every day starts from here
- A guided Jiufen, Shifen and Yehliu day tour : removes the bus-timetable juggling on day two
| Day | Focus | Transit from Taipei |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Land, EasyCard, Elephant Mountain sunset, Raohe Night Market | in-city |
| 2 | Jiufen, Shifen, Yehliu Geopark (the north coast loop) | ~1-1.5 hrs to Jiufen, ~75 min bus to Yehliu |
| 3 | Tamsui: Fort San Domingo, the old street, Fisherman’s Wharf | ~40 min MRT, direct |
Day 1: Land, get sorted, see the city in an afternoon
Land at Taoyuan (TPE) and take the Airport MRT into town, Express (35 to 38 minutes) or Commuter (about 50), same NT$160 fare. Get an EasyCard the moment you’re through the gate; it runs the MRT, buses, YouBike and most convenience stores, and you’ll use it constantly for the rest of the trip.
Drop your bags, then hike Elephant Mountain in the late afternoon for the skyline shot with Taipei 101 glowing behind it, free, 20 to 40 minutes, and a better photo than the paid observatory gives you. Skip the observatory entirely if you’re tight on time; it’s a fine view but not one that needs a whole afternoon, and it hasn’t been the world’s tallest building since 2010 anyway.
Dinner at Raohe Street Night Market, not Shilin. Smaller, better food-to-crowd ratio, and cash is king here even with an EasyCard in your pocket. That’s the entire “Taipei the city” portion of this trip. Tomorrow you leave it behind.
Day 2: The north coast loop
This is the day that makes the whole trip worth it. Jiufen, Shifen and Yehliu Geopark sit close enough together on the north coast that you can string all three into one long day, and doing exactly that beats splitting them across a week of half-measures.
Jiufen is a hillside mountain town, not a Taipei neighborhood, roughly an hour to an hour and a half out by MRT plus the 1062 bus, or by train to Ruifang and a connecting bus. Go early. Shifen comes next: an old railway street built so close to the tracks that vendors clear their stalls when a train passes, plus a waterfall and the sky lantern releases. Yehliu Geopark rounds it out, coastal rock formations carved into shapes like the famous Queen’s Head, reachable via bus 1815 in about 75 minutes.
Managing three separate bus routes and a train transfer in one day is genuinely annoying to plan solo. A guided combo tour covers all three legs in around nine hours and removes the logistics headache entirely, at the cost of moving at someone else’s pace. Either way, this single day delivers more than the entire rest of your Taipei time combined.
Day 3: Tamsui, the easy one
Why does Tamsui belong on a short trip when Jiufen and Yehliu don’t repeat? Because it needs nothing extra: no bus transfer, no timed connection, just the MRT red line straight there and straight back. Tamsui sits at the end of the line, an easy half day: Fort San Domingo, the old street, and Fisherman’s Wharf for a sunset that’s genuinely worth the trip out. It’s a good soft landing after yesterday’s marathon.
If you had a fourth day, this is where the High Speed Rail comes in, and it’s worth knowing about even if you don’t use it this time. Taiwan’s HSR gets you to Taichung in about an hour, which happens to be where bubble tea was actually invented, not Taipei, whatever the cafe chalkboards around Ximending imply. Keep it in mind for next time; Taipei is a fine three-day base, but it’s a much better one-week base.
Getting around and gotchas
The EasyCard covers everything above except some rural bus fares and small vendors in Jiufen and Shifen, so keep cash on hand throughout. Typhoon season runs June to October, peaking August through September, and it will cancel a day trip with no warning, so build a spare afternoon into any itinerary during those months if you can. MRT paid zones ban eating and drinking, water included, fines from NT$1,500.
One concrete tip
Do the north coast loop on a weekday, not a weekend. Jiufen’s alleys are barely walkable on a Saturday and completely fine on a Tuesday morning, same lanterns, same views, none of the elbow-to-elbow crush.