Cherry Blossom Season & Trip to Suwon
It is officially Week 9 of studying abroad in South Korea! I know every week I always say how time is flying by too fast BUT IT TRULY IS. Here is my recap of the past two weeks and honestly after my last entry I did not think anything could top it but this week comes very close.
To start off, it is officially cherry blossom season woohoo!! I have been looking forward to the cherry blossoms ever since we arrived to Korea. We had initially hoped that the cherry blossoms would sprout a couple weeks ago but it took a while. Anyways, to celebrate the season beginning we took a trip to Seokchon Lake which is one of the popular places to visit if you want to get the best pictures with the cherry blossoms. We tried to get there as early as we could to avoid the large crowds. We eventually took a few individual pictures by the lake itself and a group picture on the main pathway with all of the cherry blossoms.
A couple days after this, we traveled to Yeouido Park to ride bicycles by the river and also find some more cherry blossoms. We broke up into groups of two and rode on the family bicycles. It was so much fun besides the part where we had to bike uphill :( After returning the bikes, we found a few cherry blossom trees to take pictures with and made our way back to the dorms.
During this time, Jamie took us to see the Azalea festival where hundreds of Azalea bushes had bloomed. The flowers themselves were so beautiful and vibrant. When we first arrived, I had thought it was a picturesque location, however, I was wrong as the azaleas were planted on steep hills that we had to hike in order to snag a nice picture. Overall, it was nice getting to see the bright flowers as we make our way out of the winter season and into spring!
Time for my favorite part of this week...SUWON!! We initially planned to visit Korea's largest amusement park, Everland, a few days ago but we decided to turn it into a short trip like Incheon. On our first day, we went to Seoul Station and took the KTX train to Suwon. There, we checked into our hotel and took a taxi to Everland. It was quite a windy road getting there but once we arrived, everything was so cute. Luckily, we picked a weekday so the park itself was not very crowded. As we made our way into the park, we grabbed some food and Jamie, Christina, and Kylie wanted to go to the butterfly garden which I was heavily against because I am so afraid of butterlies. After they finished, we ran into Panda Grandpa who was the caretaker of Fu Bao, a panda who was loaned to South Korea by China, who went viral all over social media. Initially, we saw a big crowd surrounding him so we had no idea who it was until we got closer and got a quick selfie with him! After this, we went inside the park and rode the carousel and arrived to the tulip garden. My favorite flowers are tulips so it was amazing to see hundreds of tulips planted everywhere as well as Sanrio characters. We spent around 2 hours just taking photos of everything. After finishing up, we rode a few rides and made out way back to the hotel via shuttle bus.
The next day, we paid a visit to Starfield Mall in Suwon. I have already visited the infamous Starfield Library located in Coex Mall but this location was so much better. The mall itself is around 9 floors and has a library that is connected to about 4 of the floors. We shopped and visited every single floor which resulted in us staying in the mall for 5 hours?! To be honest, this was probably my most favorite mall that I have visisted in Korea just because of the variety of stores, cafes, restaurants, and things to do (arcade, spa's, zipline..etc) The Starfield Library located in this mall was a lot bigger comapred to Coex and a lot more entertaining because of the huge planets hung from the ceiling, the large staircases, and the multi level library nooks.
On our final day, we visited several infamous locations where popular Korean dramas were filmed. We visited the cafe from the Kdrama "Our Beloved Summer" that showcased the characters unifroms and also the gate from "Lovely Runner". Once we finished up our sightseeing we made our way back to Suwon Station and took the KTX train back to Seoul!
Overall, this week was fantastic! Cherry blossom season arrived and finally got to go to Everland both of which I had been looking forward to every since arriving to South Korea. Although the cold weather hasn't subsided, I really hope it starts warming up soon because I am sick of wearing my thick jacket everywhere.
