Flowers in Olympic Park
The park is both a modern and historical landmark: it's a huge piece of land in the middle of the city and apart from the various sports-themed venues, fountains, and modern art sculptures there is also remnants from the early Baekje Dynasty including Mongchon Haeja (moat) and Mongchon Fortress. It's a lovely place to visit if you're in Seoul and have time to just walk around enjoying the scenery.
So....I started my morning pretty early even though we had decided to leave whenever we were ready today (sleeping in is difficult when you are so used to getting up at the crack of dawn). I took a shower, wrapped up in a towel and headed into my room to put on some clothes only to remember that the shorts I wanted to wear were still hanging where I left them to dry outside on our patio.
Not really thinking about it, I stepped out onto the patio and reached to grab my shorts off the hanger when out of the corner of my eye I noticed someone walking past the cars parked in the lot down bellow and came to a sudden, horrifying realization:
I was outside, only three floors up, dressed in nothing but a towel and I just so happened to also have a lovely floral shower cap on my head...
What's worse is that the person who was walking by (totally a dude by-the-way) soooo noticed me standing there and our eyes locked and it was pretty much the awkwardest thing ever.
I think I'll be more careful about retrieving my clothes in the future.
Any~way, Jenee and I left around 11:00 and we picked up some sandwiches to have for lunch on our way to the station. Olympic Park was a pretty long subway ride (something like 14 stops) but we got there around noon and walked out of the station to be greeted by grey skies and the possibility of rain.
Of course.
But it wasn't raining yet so we headed into the park and got ready to explore!
The first thing you see when you exit the station is the magnificent World Peace Gate (entrance to the park), obviously constructed in honor of the Seoul Olympic Games in 1988.
Inside the park there is an information center where you can get a nice booklet that includes a map in English and then there is this large area where events are held.
We found a bench and sat down to eat our lunch. Because it is Saturday, there was a lot of people out enjoying the park and some events were going on as well.
After eating, we picked a path to start walking down and just went. The park is so big that there is like a park within the park so we just kinda had to go and hope we were kinda sorta making a circle (lol the map was only just a little helpful).
The scenery is beautiful. I'm a little bummed that it was such an overcast day but at least it wasn't hot!
The park also houses some gardens and trails of flowers. Even though it is early fall, we still got to see some pretty blossoms.
Then there was the historical sites and art sculptures. Apparently Olympic Park is one of the top five best sculpture parks in the world and it's funny because I was just telling Jenee that they should of called it "Modern Art Park" and not "Olympic Park."
And this should be a given by now, but of course within Olympic Park there is also a drama shooting location! The currently airing drama The Master's Sun (주군의 태양) shot a few scenes at the park in the first episode with characters Tae Gong Shil (Gong Hyo Jin) and Joo Joong Won (So Ji Sub).
Episode 1 of The Master's Sun
We were a little bit worried that we wouldn't be able to find it because (as I mentioned earlier) the park is huge and there are most certainly a lot of trees. But, eventually, we did find it!
Well, it's not nearly as vibrant since it's no longer summer but it's definitely the same tree! And actually, you can't go on the grass at this particular location (I even asked a nice security guard that was nearby just to be sure). We called it the "sacred grass" since there doesn't appear to be any obvious reason why you can pretty much walk on all the grass throughout the park except for this grass. Boo. But just FYI in case you ever decide to visit because there isn't any signs posted or anything that say to keep off the grass.
And if you want to find this shooting location, here is where the tree is (since we had a hard time locating it...but it's easy to get to once you know where it's at).
If you click on the picture it will get bigger ^-^
We were finished up in the park by 2:00PM which was just perfect. A nice, relaxing day and we got to see a lot of really pretty sights. Plus? It totally didn't start raining until right when we were leaving. Score!
I will leave you with this hilarious commercial (thanks Jenee)...make sure you watch until the end :D
0 comments:
Post a Comment