7-Day Itinerary for Taipei, Taiwan

Taipei 101 hasn’t been the world’s tallest building since 2010, when Burj Khalifa overtook it, and it isn’t in the current top ten either. That doesn’t make it less worth visiting; it makes the itinerary that keeps repeating the old claim worth fixing.

Day 1: Arrival and city orientation

From Taoyuan Airport, take the Airport MRT into the city rather than a taxi. The express service reaches Taipei Main Station in 39 minutes for NT$160; the all-stops commuter train takes 53 minutes at the same fare. Both run from roughly 6am to 11pm and are unaffected by the traffic that can double a taxi’s travel time during rush hour.

Base yourself in Ximending or Zhongshan District, both central and well connected by MRT, with everything from international chains to budget guesthouses. Buy an EasyCard at any MRT station on arrival; it covers buses, the metro, and even convenience store purchases, and saves the hassle of single-journey tickets for the rest of the week.

Spend the afternoon at Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall and the adjacent 228 Peace Memorial Park, then walk Ximending, Taipei’s closest equivalent to a youth-culture shopping district, all neon signage and street performers. In the evening, head to Shilin Night Market for stinky tofu, oyster omelets, and bubble tea, and expect the smell of stinky tofu to hit you a full block before the stall does; that’s normal, not a warning sign.

Day 2: Taipei 101 and Xinyi

Taipei 101 remains genuinely worth the visit even without a superlative attached to its height. The 89th-floor observatory ticket runs about NT$600 (around 20 US dollars), and the building’s tuned mass damper, an 800-tonne steel pendulum that keeps the tower stable in typhoons and earthquakes, is visible and explained on-site, which is more interesting than the view alone.

For lunch, Din Tai Fung’s original Xinyi branch is the famous choice for xiao long bao, and yes, the queue is real; a same-day reservation through their app saves the standing wait. In the evening, Raohe Street Night Market is smaller and less overwhelming than Shilin, with a more concentrated stretch of good stalls, a fair trade if you found Shilin exhausting the night before.

Day 3: Yangmingshan National Park

Yangmingshan sits close enough to the city that a half-day trip is realistic, but the park rewards a full day. The volcanic landscape produces active sulfur vents and fumaroles you can smell and see steaming, plus genuine hot springs, hiking trails through Qingtiangong Temple, and seasonal flower displays that draw crowds in spring. Eat at one of the small restaurants near the park entrance rather than packing food; the local mountain vegetable dishes here are better than anything you’d bring in.

Day 4: The northern coast

Yehliu Geopark’s wind-and-sea-carved rock formations, including the famous mushroom-shaped Queen’s Head, are worth an early start since the geopark gets crowded fast once tour buses arrive by midmorning.

Jiufen, the hillside town often linked to Spirited Away (Miyazaki has denied it was a direct inspiration, though the visual echo is obvious), is best visited before 10am or on a weekday; weekend crowds on the main Old Street can turn a scenic walk into a shuffle. If you can manage it, staying overnight lets you see the lantern-lit alleys after the day-trippers clear out, which is a genuinely different experience from the daytime crush. Try the taro balls and a bowl of the local shaved ice while you’re there.

Day 5: Tamsui

Tamsui’s Old Street and riverside promenade are pleasant, but the fort here is Fort San Domingo, not Fort Zeelandia; that’s an easy mix-up since both are 17th-century colonial forts in Taiwan, but Fort Zeelandia is in Tainan, hundreds of kilometers south, built by the Dutch, while Fort San Domingo in Tamsui traces back to an earlier Spanish fort later rebuilt by the Dutch as Fort Antonio. Skip the confusion and just enjoy Tamsui for what it actually has: a good sunset over the river mouth, seafood restaurants along the wharf, and mango shaved ice as a local specialty worth seeking out even outside mango season, since most shops use frozen fruit that holds up fine.

Day 6: Beitou hot springs

Beitou is a short MRT ride from central Taipei and has genuine geothermal hot springs, some public and free at Thermal Valley’s outdoor pools, others private and paid at hotel spas. Spend the morning soaking, then hike Datun Mountain in the afternoon for a clear-day view back over the whole Taipei basin. Dinner nearby should lean into seafood or hot pot, both well represented in the district.

Day 7: Last day

Spend the morning shopping in Da’an or Songshan, or duck into the Breeze Center mall if you want everything under one roof before an afternoon flight. For a final meal, Addiction Aquatic Development near Minquan MRT station is effectively a seafood market with sit-down counters attached, so you can eat sashimi and grilled seafood that was on ice an hour earlier, a genuinely better way to close out the trip than an airport meal.

One last tip worth remembering: convenience stores in Taiwan, 7-Eleven and FamilyMart especially, sell everything from bus top-ups to hot food to phone SIM cards, and they’re open 24 hours on nearly every corner, which makes them a better emergency backup than most guidebooks give them credit for.