Day 15: Pyeonghwa Park, World Cup Park

As I had spent the first 2 weeks travelling on my own seeing what I wanted to see, today was more about going somewhere my mom wanted to visit and spending time with her and my aunts. My mom’s knee was a much better now so she wanted to see some of Seoul and because she’s really into nature and serene and quiet environments, we did some brainstorming about where to go. My aunt had gone to World Cup Park and atop Haneul Park before so she suggested we go there. That was fine with me because it was somewhere I wanted to check out also and the weather was perfect today. Due to my cousin and niece’s visit, my visit to the World Cup Stadium earlier in my trip ended short and without seeing the surrounding parks. At the time, the weather was extremely hot so it was doubtful whether I really would have seen much of the parks anyways.
We headed out to the park via cab after eating lunch at home as it was our intention to get there after the peak sun time. The walk to the main street where we hailed the cab was about a 10 minute walk away, all downhill and on the way there was a convenience store where I normally stocked up on snacks and drinks. Hailing a cab in Seoul was always effortless as there were plenty around. If I ever failed to hail one, I knew there would always be another one driving by in a matter of moments.

As the stoned sign above suggests, I always referred to this park as World Cup Park but it wasn’t until later when I got home to Toronto that I discovered the park is actually called Pyeonghwa Park. Pyeonghwa Park, located across the street and south of World Cup Stadium is actually one of several parks that form the larger collective known as The World Cup Park.

We got dropped off just past the stadium and worked our way towards the park. The main attraction to the park seemed to be the nice pond and spacious boardwalk that ran alongside it which we used to walk all the way to the other side of the park where there was a restaurant and convenience store located. There were various flower arrangements along the way which we took our time in checking out.

The weather was absolutely brilliant on this day. If every day was like this in Seoul, I would have been an even happier traveller than I already was. The sun was shining but there was a nice breeze. We slowly made our way to the end where we encountered a group of scary looking totem poles. There were a bunch of professional looking cyclists resting up near the totem poles also. With their Darth Vader like cycling dust masks on, my mom and aunts found them to be more scarier looking than the totems.

There were many patio tables out in front of the convenience store and restaurant so we sat ourselves down and chilled out. I bought a round of World Cones for everyone and my aunt bought a warm canned coffee. The thing I liked about convenience stores in Seoul is that you can usually find cold and warm canned drinks. The warm canned drinks were usually in a separate small heater that looked like a mini refrigerator. I opened up a large bag of one of my favourite snacks in Korea, 꼬깔콘 and we proceeded to munch away happily while talking about this and that. My little aunt is an all around funny person so it’s always entertaining being around her.

The weather was the type where in the sun it was warm and in the shade it got a little cool after a while. We started in the shade but because we ended up talking for a long time, we eventually moved over to a sunny spot. My mom brought her own Tilley hat from Toronto and my aunts wore the typical visor hat that many Koreans wear. As I didn’t bring a hat on my trip (I can’t wear hats you know, it messes the hair ^^), before leaving for the park my mom suggested I adopt one of my aunt’s visor hats as my own as she had a whole selection of them. I think getting burned by the sun would actually be a much more pleasant experience than being caught wearing one of those visors. Yet my mom insisted that it would look fine on me.^^ Needless to say, I left the visor at home and ended up putting on a lot of sunscreen before I left. Sunscreen was definitely a necessity on a daily basis. I still remember being caught in Tokyo in February without sunscreen and getting burned.

When we got to the park by cab, it actually dropped us off right near Haneul Park, which is a park located at the top of a hill and is one of the World Cup Parks. My aunt mentioned that there use to be a shuttle that brought people up to the park and back down but the only way to get to there now was via a long set of stairs which was out of the question because of my mom’s knee. As my mom and aunts had plans to continue to sit out on the patio and explore more of Pyeonghwa Park, they suggested I go check out Haneul Park myself. At her suggestion, I quickly took off towards Haneul Park and will talk about it in the next blog post…

After checking Haneul Park, I came back down to Pyeonghwa Park and met my mom and aunts in front of the cosmos field located next to the stream.

They told me that while walking through the park they ran into a white rabbit and knowing how much I love rabbits, we backtracked and went looking for it. I managed to see the white rabbit for a split second but it was so quick, it darted into a bush and disappeared. We continued to walk around the park for a little while and came across this constellation map of the stars on the ground with all the zodiac signs located in a circle around the map. It was really cool and I could tell that the stars were actually little lights and it would have been so neat to have seen it all lit at night but we left close to when the sun was setting. You can get a better picture of what it looks like in the video clip at the end of this post.

I really enjoyed my time here at the park. More importantly, my mom really enjoyed her time here. She had some high expectations coming to Korea after 25 years and being able to spend it here at this lovely and quiet park, in such beautiful weather in the company of her sisters really made her day. I found Pyeonghwa Park to be the perfect size to go for a nice slow stroll and still comfortably be able to see all of it. What’s nice about this park and all the World Cup Parks is that they are located next to each other so if one is not enough, you can easily hop over and continue your stroll. It was nice to get away from the city and spend a relatively quiet day here, moving at a much slower tempo than what I was use to in my travels thus far in Seoul.
Here are some video clips I took while at the park.