Today I got up early to go out and explore.
I left around 11:30am. I was heading out to Hwaseong Fortress in Suwon. Its a long trip. It took about an hour and 20 mins to get there by subway. I had to transfer once.
Hwaseong (Brilliant Fortress), the wall surrounding the centre of Suwon, the provincial capital of Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, was built in the late eighteenth century by King Jeongjo of the Joseon Dynasty to honour and house the remains of his father Prince Sado, who had been murdered by being locked alive inside a rice chest by his own father King Yeongjo having failed to obey his command to commit suicide. Located 30 kilometres south of Seoul and enclosing much of central Suwon including King Jeongjo's palace Haenggung, UNESCO designated the fortress a World Heritage site in 1997. The Suwoncheon, the main stream in Suwon, flows through the centre of the fortress.
I walked around and looked at Suwoncheon first. Its a stream that runs through the fortress. Then I went into the fortress. Its massive. I think I was there for about 3 hours. Its a lot of walking. You can take a trolley around but its hard to take pictures from a moving object.
When you get around to one side of the fortress it is quite a hike straight up the mountain. There were tons of stairs. I had to stop about 4 or 5 times on the way up. I'm glad I brought some water with me. I needed it! There had to be over 100 stairs and it was very steep. The way down was easy. I think I got enough exercise today to make up for not going to the gym.ha.
How to get to Hwaseong: Line 1 (Dark blue) Suwon station, Exit 4 or 5, walk to the first bus stop. Buses 11, 13, 13-3, 20, 32, 58 stop near the fortress. I took bus 13 and got off at the "Paldalmun" stop.
Cost: 1,000 won (less than $1!)
Hours: 9:00-6:00PM
Tip: if you plan to walk the course its going to take a while. Wear some good shoes! Bring some water with you. There are a ton of steps to go up and down!!
here are some pictures: (click on the album to view)
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| Hwaseong Fortress |
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| Suwoncheon |
When I was done it was around 5pm. There was no way I was going to make it to Jamsil in time to have time to view the Seoul Design Olympiad. Actually I would have had time. I just realized it stays open till 9pm on the weekend. (Its good that its still open till the 29th! I'll go next Saturday while I'm in the area for my Korean lesson in Sinchon or Hongdae)
I decided to just go to Gangnam to try out a restaurant. It's called "Butterfinger Pancakes". I read a lot of blogs saying that it was the happening place to be for an American style brunch. They serve Brunch all day long sorta like Dennys in the US. When I got there around 7pm it was busy. I waited for probably 10-15 mins to be seated. After I was seated I looked at the massive menu. Took me a while to figure out what I wanted.Its really expensive. A big breakfast like what you could get at dennys for $7-8 would set you back $11-15 not including drink. I didn't want to spend a lot so I just got buttermilk pancakes and a coke. You could choose what kind of syrup-I chose maple, butter-honey vanilla, and compote-strawberry. I got 2 small pancakes. The pancakes were really good. The combination of the syrup, butter and strawberry compote was awesome.
FYI: Compote is a dessert made of whole or pieces of fruit in sugar syrup.
The 2 pancakes and a big glass of coke was @$9. Really expensive! But it was good to have pancakes. I love pancakes! I havent had any since 2008!
In case you're wondering--There are no items on the menu that contain 'butterfinger' candy...no relation to the candy bar
How to get to Butterfinger Pancakes: Line 2 (green) Gangnam Station, Exit 6..walk straight, turn left at 'the body shop' and walk straight. Its beside Burger King on the left side of the street.
Hours: 7am-3am
Price: expensive!
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