2013 Sept Korea - 10 days South Korea Trip - Day 7 (Seoul)

Day 7 - 19 Sept 2013 

Seoul - Children Grand Park / Lotter World - lunch  / Seoul Tower 

A lot of places were closed today, because is a very important day for them -  their Chuseok holiday.

So we decided to just head to 1-2 places will do 

First place we went was Children Grand Park. 

Seoul - Children Grand park      

It covers a total of 530,000 square meters and is an ultimate leisure facility for families. They have a zoo, botanical garden, amusement facilities and performance events.  

Add: 216, Neungdong-ro, Gwangjin-gu, Seoul 

         서울특별시 광진구 능동로 216 (능동)

How to go : Children’s grand park station – (Line 7 / exit 1) 

Open : 9 am - 7 pm  

Entrance Fee: Free 

[ more information - http://www.visitkorea.or.kr/enu/SI/SI_EN_3_1_1_1.jsp?cid=1051832 ]

Children Grand Park 

so relaxing 

outside of botanical garden

Music fountain 

damn nice !! ice-cream drink 

Is really a relaxing place. Although many of  kids were playing around but was not very noise (maybe because the place is very big)  

Weather was so hot that I went around looking for ice-cream. Read about an ice-cream drink before coming to Korea - picture beside, so happy that I got the chance to really tried it. And is really good that I was like a baby, holding and keep sucking it while walking around    

We spent around two hrs there. Visited to their zoo, botanical garden and watched their music fountain only (as the other area need to pay, these places were free entrance). Actually we wanted to have lunch there before heading to our next location but the restaurant were full, so we change our mind and just have lunch at Lotte World. 

Original plan was to spend the rest of the day at Jamsil Station (Lotte World Underground shopping mall & Lotte world). Thinking that since Lotte world is not close, the underground shopping mall should not close too, but I was wrong, almost all the store are close   

Luckily the food court is open. The food court is very different from the food court that we have in Singapore. They have the menu outside (in both Korean & English), after we order & paid outside, they passed a buzzer to us. We sat down and wait for the buzz, then we go over to the counter to collect the food.

I ordered cheese pork cutlet - My lunch  

Since the store in the shopping mall are close, we thought we should just go in to Lotte World. We are not playing the ride as TC(my friend) don't dare to play trilling drive at all, we are going in to look around only, so we decide to buy the afternoon ticket. We can't buy the ticket as is too early (afternoon ticket can buy after 4pm only.) So we don't want to waste time and wait, so we change plan and go other place instead. Went back to rest for a while then head to Seoul Tower 

Seoul - Nansam Cable car (남산 케이블카) / N Seoul Tower (N서울타워) 

Seoul Tower sits on top of Namsan Mountain (243m), It offers panoramic views of Seoul and the surrounding areas. Their night view are one of the most beautiful view of all, is very nice place for couple to go there for dating.  

[ more information here - http://visitkorea.or.kr/enu/SI/SI_EN_3_1_1_1.jsp?cid=264550 ]

Fee: Round-trip - 6,300 KRW one-trip - 4,800 KRW 

Open : 10am - 10.30pm  

Add : 105, Namsangongwon-gil, Yongsan-gu, Seoul 
           서울특별시 용산구 남산공원길 105 (용산동2가)

How to go : 

(To cable car station) From Hoehyon Intersection (Myeongdong & Hoehyeon Stations, Subway Line 4) walk towards Namsan Tunnel #3 and take the free Namsan Oreumi elevator (glass lift) to the cable car station

Seoul Tower from far 

queue to take the lift 



Or you can walk up 

while waiting ; cable car

Read from some tourist book and found out there is this glass lift that we could take to the cable car station. Instead of walking/ take the bus up, we thought is a must try, since we are here. Many people were queuing up at the glass lift when we reached there. Not just tourist, many local was queuing with us too.

While queuing to take the lift, I can guess there should be a lot of people up at Seoul Tower  and I was right !! There were so many cars and people when we reached the cable car station !! We have to queue until outside.

We queue and queue and queue, waited from sun setting to sun settled. Took us 2 hrs before we got the chance to board the cable car.

queuing 

More queue 

Seoul Tower 

After so long of queuing, finally we got to see Seoul Tower. So many people were queuing to buy the ticket to the observatory, so we decided to just stayed on the ground floor. 

Key locked fence was the most popular view, many people took picture of it and with it. But the surrounding has no lights, so is hard to take picture of it (so if you are interested to take picture of it too, please go in the day), 

But to me, the night view was much better than the key locked fence. Although many people were around taking picture and blocking the view but we were still able to see very very nice view. 

After that, went for a walk in the souvenir shops before we headed back to take the cable car. 

Night view 

Going back also need to queue 

No way we were able to have dinner at the food court there (TOO MANY PEOPLE EATING THERE!), so we though just go back and have simple dinner (like cup noodle; hehe). To go back, we had to queue some more, but thank god this queue was much faster.

When we reached back the cable car station, the queue to go up Seoul Tower was still damn long and the queue down via glass lift were also long. So this time,we just walked down instead of waiting for the lift