Explore the world with Magelline!

Portuguese sailors are supposed to have named Taiwan Ilha Formosa in the sixteenth century. That's the story, anyway. Taipei, the capital, sits in a bowl of volcanic hills in the island's north. It rains a lot. People carry umbrellas the way others carry keys, and the city keeps going. The best way to see it is to give it one full day and start early.

5:30, Elephant Mountain
Take the metro to Xiangshan station and walk to the trailhead. The stairs are steep. Twenty minutes, less if you're fit, and expect to be overtaken by retired men in tracksuits who do this every morning. From the rocks at the top you look straight across at Taipei 101. On a cloudy morning, the tower disappears somewhere around the fortieth floor, which is its own kind of view. Breakfast afterwards: warm soy milk and youtiao, long fried dough sticks.

8:00, Longshan Temple
Longshan Temple has its own metro stop, which tells you how much it matters here. Settlers from Fujian built it in 1738. It has burned, cracked in earthquakes and taken a direct hit from Allied bombs in 1945. The statue of Guanyin in the main hall survived that raid, and people still talk about it. Watch the red wooden blocks shaped like half moons. Someone asks a question, drops the pair on the floor and reads the answer from how they land. One flat side up and one round side up means yes.

11:00, Dihua Street
This is old Taipei. In the 1800s, the Dadaocheng district shipped tea and camphor down the river, and merchants built tall shophouses with carved fronts that still stand. The ground floors sell dried shiitake, scallops, herbs, fabric and a surprising amount of dried fruit.

Halfway along is Xiahai City God Temple. It's small. People come for Yue Lao, the god of marriage, who is said to tie a red thread between future couples. Many come back later with wedding candy for him.

14:00, Beitou
Change at Beitou station for the short branch line to Xinbeitou. You'll smell the sulfur before you see anything. Thermal Valley, at the top of the park, is a steaming green pond too hot to touch. On the way down you pass the public library, a wooden building with a planted roof.

The open-air public bath near the stream is mixed, so bring a swimsuit. Hotel baths are usually separate for men and women, and there you go in with nothing on. An hour is plenty. You'll come out heavy and slow, which is the idea.

17:00, Maokong
Getting here from Beitou takes over an hour, right across the city to Taipei Zoo station. Then the gondola. If you don't mind a longer queue, wait for a cabin with a glass floor.

Maokong grows tea, mostly Tieguanyin and Baozhong. Teahouses along the road brew it in small clay pots, and many also cook with the leaves. Find a terrace, order a pot and stay until dark, when the basin below fills with lights.

19:30, Für Elise in the Lanes
Taipei has almost no public bins. Garbage leaves by truck, and every truck plays music so people know it's coming. Usually Für Elise. Sometimes A Maiden's Prayer. Whole lanes empty out when they hear it, people carrying bags and sorted recycling, a few in pyjamas. Two minutes of chatting at the curb, then the truck moves on.

21:00, Raohe Night Market
The entrance is at Ciyou Temple, right by Songshan station. The first queue you'll see is for pepper buns. They're baked stuck to the inside wall of a clay oven and come out stuffed with pork, lots of black pepper and scallion. Everyone burns their mouth on the first one. Then keep walking: herbal pork rib soup, grilled squid, stinky tofu if you're brave, shaved ice to finish. Raohe is a single lane about 600 meters long.

23:30, Taipei 101
At this hour, the observatory is closed, so you look at 101 from the street. It's 508 meters tall, finished in 2004, and it held the title of world's tallest building for six years. The design follows bamboo: eight sections of eight floors each, because eight is a lucky number in Chinese. Near the top, a 660-ton steel ball hangs on cables to steady the tower in typhoons and earthquakes. The lights change colour by weekday. It's red on Monday, then cycles through the rainbow to purple on Sunday.

Magelline Perspectives
We think Taipei works best without a tight plan. Everything here is close to a metro station, the city feels safe late at night, and the convenience stores never close. Pack an umbrella. Leave room for a second dinner.

Crossing from Miyajimaguchi over calm water, you watch a huge vermilion gate rise directly out of the sea. Japanese artists have ranked this view among the country's top three scenic spots for generations, though locals officially call the island Itsukushima. Miyajima translates to shrine island, a nickname rooted in ancient reverence. Early worshippers considered every foot of soil sacred. They built Itsukushima Shrine on wooden stilts over the tidal flat so pilgrims could dock and enter without stepping on holy ground.

Itsukushima Shrine & the Great Torii
Warlord Taira no Kiyomori gave the shrine its iconic layout in 1168. High tide lifts the entire complex off the mud, turning its long red hallways into a floating wooden village. Low tide pulls the water back to expose tidal pools, tiny crabs, and wet sand. You can walk right out to the Great Torii gate during these dry hours.

The current gate was built in 1875 from heavy camphor wood. It reaches nearly 17 meters tall and rests on the seabed under its own massive weight without underground pillars. UNESCO listed the complex as a World Heritage site in 1996. Checking daily tide charts before you arrive lets you see both dramatic states in a single visit.

Mount Misen
Mount Misen climbs 535 meters behind the buildings. Dense primaeval forest covers the slopes, winding past mossy boulders and mountain streams. Hikers can tackle the two-hour climb or take the ropeway most of the way up. Near the peak, the fire inside Reikado Hall has burned continuously since the monk Kobo Daishi lit it in 806. In 1964 a light from this fire was carried to Hiroshima to kindle the Peace Flame. The summit offers open views across the Seto Inland Sea, where passenger ferries cut white wakes through dark blue water.

Temples & Deer
Daishoin Temple sits near the base of the mountain. Hundreds of small stone statues dressed in hand-knit caps line the grounds, and metal prayer wheels line the stair railings for visitors to spin. Nearby stands Senjokaku, a massive unpainted wooden hall ordered by Toyotomi Hideyoshi in 1587. Construction stopped when he died, leaving an airy, open-sided structure next to a vibrant five-story pagoda built in 1407.

Wild sika deer roam the town streets freely. They are tame enough to walk right up to tourists, though they will gladly chew up paper maps or train tickets left in easy reach.

Tastes of the Island
The best food waits along Omotesando Street. Hiroshima Bay produces world-class oysters, which vendors grill fresh over hot coals right on the sidewalk. You will also find momiji manju, leaf-shaped cakes stuffed with sweet red bean paste, alongside anago meshi, a dish of grilled conger eel served over seasoned rice. Red maples cover Momijidani Park in brilliant colour every autumn.

Notes
Ferries run continuously from Miyajimaguchi, taking about ten minutes. The JR ferry is covered by the Japan Rail Pass and also accepts IC cards like ICOCA, while direct boats connect the island to Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. Local authorities collect a small 100 yen visitor fee with your ferry ticket. Staying overnight in a local ryokan reveals the island's quiet side. Once the final day boat departs, the daytime crowds vanish, lanterns light up the dark shoreline, and the lit gate glows against the night water.

Magelline’s Perspective
Most visitors give Miyajima a few hours and leave with a photo of the gate. The island deserves more. Arrive at high tide, wait for the sea to pull back, climb Misen while the light is soft, and stay for the evening when the deer settle, and the lanterns come on. Few places in Japan let you feel this close to the old idea of a sacred island, and fewer still let you sleep there.

The first sound you notice is the brass. It drifts over the Theresienwiese long before the tents come into view, mixing with the smell of roasted almonds and woodsmoke. Then the crowd thickens, the dirndls and leather breeches multiply, and Munich reveals the festival it has been preparing for all year.

Oktoberfest is the largest folk festival on earth, and every autumn it draws millions of people to a single meadow on the edge of the old city. Locals simply call it the Wiesn. Spend a few hours there and you start calling it that too.

A Royal Wedding That Never Ended
The story begins in October 1810, when Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria married Princess Therese. The people of Munich were invited to celebrate on the fields outside the city gates, and the day ended with a horse race. The fields were named after the bride, and the party was repeated the following year. And the year after that.

Over two centuries, the horses disappeared, the beer arrived, and the festival moved into September to catch warmer evenings. Today it lasts about two and a half weeks. It opens on a Saturday in the second half of September and closes on the first Sunday of October, or on 3 October if that day comes later.

Dressed for the Wiesn
Most visitors come in Tracht, the traditional Bavarian costume. Men wear Lederhosen, short leather trousers with embroidered braces, together with a checked shirt, thick wool socks and sturdy shoes. Some add a felt hat decorated with a tuft of chamois hair. Women wear the dirndl, a fitted bodice over a white blouse with a full skirt and an apron. The bow of the apron carries a small secret: tied on the left means single, on the right means taken, at the back means widowed. Plenty of Munich families keep their best Tracht for years and pass it down.

Inside the Tents
Only Munich breweries are allowed to pour at the Wiesn. Augustiner, Paulaner, Spaten, Löwenbräu and Hofbräu all bring a special festival brew, stronger and more golden than their everyday beer. It is served in the Maß, a heavy glass mug holding a full litre, and carrying four of them at once is a skill the waitresses take seriously.

At noon on opening day, the mayor of Munich strikes a tap into the first barrel and calls out "O'zapft is!", meaning it is tapped. Twelve cannon shots follow, and only then can the beer flow.

Songs 
Every big tent has its own band, usually sitting on a raised stage in the middle. During the day they play Bavarian brass music, marches and polkas. Every twenty minutes or so comes the short toast song "Ein Prosit der Gemütlichkeit", and the whole tent rises, lifts its mugs and drinks together. By evening the program turns into a giant sing along. The "Fliegerlied" gets everyone flapping their arms like birds, German party hits fill the gaps, and international favourites like "Country Roads" or "Sweet Caroline" have thousands of strangers singing on the benches.

What to Eat Between Rounds
Half a roast chicken with crisp, salty skin is the classic order. Giant pretzels hang from wooden stands, Weißwurst arrives in the morning with sweet mustard, and grilled fish on long sticks turns slowly over glowing coals. For something sweet, look for gingerbread hearts on ribbons, decorated with icing words of love. People buy them for each other and wear them around their necks all day.

Beyond the Beer
The Wiesn is also an enormous fairground, with roller coasters, a giant Ferris wheel looking toward the Alps on clear days, and old wooden rides that have been spinning for generations. On the first Sunday, thousands march through the city centre in the costume parade, with brewery wagons pulled by horses and bands from all over Bavaria. In the southern corner, the Oide Wiesn keeps the spirit of a century ago with historic rides and folk dancing.

Tipps
Weekday mornings are the easiest time to find a seat without a reservation, while weekends fill up fast after lunch. Cash is handy, prices climb every year, and Munich hotels get booked many months ahead.

Magelline’s Perspective
Oktoberfest could easily be dismissed as one long party, but there is something touching under the noise. Strangers share benches and songs, families keep traditions alive across generations, and a whole city takes two weeks to celebrate simply being together. Come for the beer if you like. You will probably remember the people at your table much longer.