Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Day 2 of The JK Epic Adventure: Namsan Park and Namdaemun

On the second day, we decided to head out to Namsan Park. It is one of the largest parks in Seoul. Namsan means "South Mountain" in Korea. It is 262 meter (859 ft), at its highest point. Also at the top is N Seoul Tower, one of Seoul most recognizable landmarks. You can see the tower from almost any part of the city. I have also been putting off going there because I have heard that it is always super busy and crowded and that it also takes for ever to actually get to the top.


For me, I actually did not have that problem. We decided the we would take the cable car to the top because it was too hot to actually wall up to the top, and then we would walk down it. So we got off the subway, and headed towards the inclined elevator which would take us to the cable car. The elevator was going uphill at about a 45 degree slope that could take people up and down. We then walked to the ticket office to go to the cable car. We waited in line for only a couple minutes to get the ticket, then headed to another line to actually get on the cable car. We weren't in line for very long. We only waited for about 15 minutes. Then we got into the crowded cable car and headed up to the top. The cable car ride was about 3 minutes long. It also gave us our first view of Seoul, and what we would expect once we reached the top.

The inclined elevator 
I was unable to get a pic from the bottom, but here it is going down 
We decided we would head to the top of the Tower before exploring the bottom area. We went and got our tickets, and again we did not wait very long at all before we were able to get into the elevator to go to the top. While we were in the elevator, they had a television at the top, which was making us feel that we were actually flying into space, and again when we were coming back down, we were coming back to earth. We saw a 360° view of Seoul. We took our pictures, and spent about 30 min to 45 min at the top, then decided to head back down.

One of the many views of Seoul 
Jess and I at the top
At the bottom of the tower, they have areas were couples can lock a lock to the fence. It seems like there is at least one place like this in every major city in the world. I just like taking pictures of them. It looks cool when they are all together like this.

Namsan Locks of Love
After we headed to the bottom, we decided to head to our hostel. We were going to stay in a hostel this night because the next day we would head down to Yeosu, in the southern part of Korea, for the Worlds Fair. Our train was very early the next day and we wanted to be close to the station. We stayed in a hostel called Yoon & Jin. We were only there for like 10 hours. It is located near Namsan. We wanted to cool ourselves off before heading out to the market. So we rested for an hour and headed back out. What was nice about this place though, was later that night, the owners brought us some watermelon to eat. It was very good and it was very nice of them to do that.


We then headed to Namdaemun Market, so that Jess could get the feel of a Korean market. What sucked was, a lot of the placed were closed. We went on a Sunday at around 6:30ish. So I'm unsure if that is how it is normally or what. We didn't spend too much time there. We explored for a tiny bit and then left.

This is the end of our second day of our adventure. Out third day will be spend in a different part of Korea.


1 comment:

  1. thanks for nice comments about yoon & jin guest house :)

    i started to work for this guest house since yesterday as a staff
    and look for some comments/opinion about our hostel widely

    next time, if u come over seoul again, hope to meet you here :)
    thanks

    ReplyDelete