Unusual Museums

Because Katie and I are such cultured, refined travelers (ha!), we decided to take the time while in Taiwan to visit a few museums. We spent a few moments contemplating visiting the National Museum, supposedly the finest collection of Chinese art in the world, but hey, I've seen the "replacements" in the Forbidden City and, as with Chinese music, can enjoy Chinese art only in moderation. So, to quote my friend Amy, our feelings about the National Museum were, "Meh." Katie and I decided instead to visit the Museum of Drinking Water and the Taiwan Nougat Museum. Sounded a lot more exciting, or at least oddly intriguing, than a whole museum of Chinese art and artifacts.

So here we are at the Museum of Drinking Water. My initial thinking was that we'd see lots of different "specimens" of bottled water, but in fact, we saw the evolution of Taipei's water purification system, the mechanics of which were way over my head.

The building that houses all of those displays of pipes and machines and gauges was actually an old historic building that didn't seem to match what was inside at all. There were actually three or four couples outside taking their wedding photos at the Drinking Water Museum while we were there which we read was a really popoular activity at the museum.

And this tops my lists of hilarious places that I've visited. I've always loved and laughed at the word "nougat" and couldn't get over the fact that Taiwan has a Nougat Museum. It was a small, out-of-the-way place in the "dodgy" end of Taipei, but we found it and were the only guests in the museum at the time. The workers politely turned the lights on for us :)
Explanation of old nougat making techniques. I guess this is a family-owned business and the son wanted to honor his mom and her nougat making so he made this factory into a little museum. This brand of nougat is famously used at wedding in Taiwan.
Here I am posing next to an impossibly-large piece of gold covered nougat with an impossibly-large piece of nougat in my mouth as I discover how hard it is to chew a big piece of nougat without drooling! For larger groups, you can have a D.I.Y nougat-making lesson. How fun would it have been to take a field-trip to the Nougat Museum when you were in elementary school?!