Nothing Really Poignant - James in Taiwan

Stiched image of the Taipei Story House
Originally uploaded by Nothing Really Poignant

Last weekend we were looking for new and interesting places to visit and we stumbled upon a website talking about “Taipei Story House”. Steven convinced me that this is the place where Ivy and Owen had to meet, but after going there I didn’t think this was the case. Steven now claims “I’m not so sure honey”, but I am sure it isn’t the place since I showed Ivy the photo and she has never been there.

Well what is the “Taipei Story House”? Well it isn’t anything I expected. I was hoping to see some colonial house with exhibits on historical Taiwan. I was also hoping I could take photo’s inside like you can do at Filoli, but unfortunately you can’t, and I soon found out that you really wouldn’t want to bother.

The only redeemable thing was the fact that they let you listen to your MP3 player, and I was listening to the director / producer podcast for the Season 3 finale of Doctor Who. This was very entertaining and made up for the drab environment.

So how can I describe the Taipei Story House other than saying it is a nice place to listen to a podcast? Well it is a small 4 room museum about buildings that house museums. Now they don’t talk about famous museums like the one at Bilbao, but instead they talk about old buildings that are converted to museums. This is an homage to museums that really shouldn’t be because it is really boring. Sure they talk about great places like the Tate Museum in London, but the articles look like they were pulled down from Wikipedia. I really didn’t learn anything other than there are quite a few gullible people (including myself) who are willing to part with 50 NTD to see a museum on museum buildings.

They had a gift shop that sold totally unrelated items. They also had a nice cement bench that is so hot from baking in the sun you can lose weight from sitting and sweating on it. To top everything off they have an expensive cafe near by, but after sweating for 10 minutes I wasn’t really hungry. Maybe I will go back if the visit to the cafe, but the 50 NTD cover charge is somewhat steep.