Garden of the Morning Calm

We spent our Sunday exploring an amazing garden just north of Seoul - built about 50 years ago, it is an amazing place with stunning colours for this time of year - autumn - and has many wonderful features to explore. Leaving Suwon at 7.30am turned out to be a wise decision as the traffic was great and we arrived at 9am when the garden opened. This is prime time for the garden so it was pretty busy but we were able to grab a group photo at the entrance way without disturbing too many others!


We took 3 cars and had a nice group of teachers from GSIS - nice to mix with others from different divisions, all with the love of the outdoors and photograhy!  The garden had several types or themes, some were very floral, but a large number of areas were about shrubs and trees with pathways etc.

The Sunken garden area was especially interesting, as from a higher vantage point it had the shape of the Korean peninsula and it's purpose was to represent re-unification.

We stopped for a break at about 11am for coffees and so on, so I went back to the car to grab the banana cake I'd made - and discovered crowds of people coming in. It was incredible! We left to return to Suwon at about 2pm, and were amazed at the same thing - the stream of traffic coming down the 2 lane road into the garden would have gone on for about 4-5 km, at a snail's pace. We were really happy with our choice of timing - the drive home was without traffic hold-ups too, so we able to catch up with some other bits and pieces at home as well.

All in all it was an amazing place, I would highly recommend it to anyone coming to Korea.

Here's the slideshow from photobucket:

Exploring Mt Gwanggyo in Autumn

Sunday - a day of worship and a chance to get out and about, get refreshed and ready for the working week!

Today we decided to explore the Suji side of Mt Gwanggyo. We had walked up the Suwon side last year, but there are numerous trails, and today was clear (for here!!) so we thought it would be good for views.  Recently our Friday 'Elementary Coffee' was held at a cafe called 'Analog' which happened to be up this valley where the map showed the trails, so I made a mental note to visit again and check it out.

The trail began by going up a road past a Buddhist temple, then branched off in all sorts of directions.  Unfortunately, I can't yet read Korean well enough to be able to translate it for myself, so it came down to following the locals. Not a bad decision! Many locals were out enjoying the day and were dressed up seriously - walking sticks, proper gear on, all the latest sports gear for walkers...So, we followed them.

The trail was good - steep in parts - which was to be expected due to the fact that we were walking up a mountain. We enjoyed the views as they were developing as we gained altitude, and were excited to see a clearing looming. We were rather taken aback to find a concrete "H" - presumably a helipad??? - and a solar powered height meter. Yes, you read correctly. A height meter - for humans. AND, it also weighed you. *sigh*. Only in Korea?!!!

Feeling somewhat disappointed, the views not being so easy to see from here, we glanced about to discover that there were some rocks in view where people were sitting - obviously being able to see for miles - so we headed in that direction. We were really pleased to get up there and see what was possibly the best view of the area we've ever had - lovely blue sky in most directions, and only a smattering of smog in the distance!!

 Got the self-timer working again!!

Looking down to the left you can see a highway, the valley in front of it is where there are a lovely selection of cafes and restaurants. Our part of Suwon is towards the right, in fact....

... we live near the lake here - kind of! To the left of the lake a little...

Anyway, it was a great walk up. Down - not so fun. Sore hips tonight!!!

Enjoy the slideshow:

Isabel