South Korea Trip Day 3

Itinerary : Everland - Hongdae

How to go to Everland : Take subway line 2 (green line) and get off at Jamsil station. Get out from Jamsil Station exit 6, cross the street. At the bus station that located in the middle of the street, take bus no. 5800 and get off at Everland shuttle bus station. Take shuttle bus and get off at Everland.

Everland Theme Park! I was soooo excited!! I love going to theme park. So much fun. We reached Everland at about 11.00. It was about 1.5-2 hours trip from Hongdae. Everland totally is a happy place. I could feel the happiness just before the entrance. Just by seeing the gate and hear the music, it felt like I became a 10 years old kid. LOL! It has motto "Everyday is a holiday in Everland". We already printed 10% discount for foreigner from the website. The coupon is not available all year long. The ticket is one day ticket so you can ride anything you want without addition fee. Eventhough it was quite cold that day, but Everland was packed with people and most of them are Koreans.

Everland is a big place with some steep paths. It devided into 3 sections : zoo, theme park and 4 season garden. People said it's a must to buy churros in theme park, so we did! There was an Africa theme zoo but we passed it. We have that kind of zoo in here so I thought it would be the same. As we walked down the path, I saw snow leftover in the path sides and I took picture near it. My first time saw snow =p

yummy churros :9

We kept walking down the path then I saw penguins! It was my first time see penguins. They're cute!! Beside the penguins exhibit, there were sea lions'. It was also my first time see them. They are so big! I had no idea that they're really that big. Then I saw my friend ran towards me, apparently we separated when I ran to penguins exhibit, she screamed "POLAR BEAR! there!" WOAHHHH!! Polar bear!! I ran immediately towards the exhibit she pointed at. OMG! It was a real polar bear in front of my eyes. They are so cute!! Sorry for too excited, but hey, I'm a tropical person.

After taking some photos of those animals, we walked down again to Snow Buster ride. It's a snow sledding. Snow Buster is only open from December to late February. We lined the queue for about 30 minutes. We took the snow tire and went to the "lift". It wasn't actually a lift. The snow tire was hooked into a walk-tire wire and it dragged us uphill. The hill for the sled wasn't too steep but good enough for high speed. It was so much fun!!

In winter, Everland built a lane with nutcracker theme. I love nutcracker! Too bad no parade at that day :( Nearby nutcracker lane there's a thrilled ride called T Express. It's said to be the steepest wooden roller coaster in the world. I wanted to ride it but the waiting time was 2 hours so I passed it. For lunch we had pasta in nutcracker lane.

Next is the Fable Garden. It's a lane that contains of short story and some statues along with the stories.

 We continued to explore Everland to the 4 season garden. In summer the garden filled with beautiful flowers, but since it was winter there were some white christmas trees and some snowman statues.

From 4 seasons garden we we went to Rotating House. Before we went inside, we were gathered in a hall and the officer explained or told a story in Korean. We do understand Korean a little but at that time it sounded bla..bla..bla.. The rotating house was cool! We sat in 4 rows sits and then it was start rotating. Suddenly the door we came in from already way above us. It took less than 5 minutes for the whole ride. After that, we walked up to another rides section. We decided to ride viking ship. The viking ship was big and steep! It reach 75 degrees angle. It was the highest viking ship I ever ride and of course it was so much fun!

Then we went to Global Village. It was like a cave full with dolls shown the icons from some countries in the world. We rode on a small boat that floating automatically along the tunnel.

The next ride I took was Hurricane. It's like viking but it has round shape. Instead of just swinging, It also turning 360 degrees horizontally while swinging. The later, the turn and the swing is getting faster. That was really fun! I want to ride it again.

                             cre : seankang @ YT

There were still so many other rides but it was already late afternoon. We took a look in the biggest gift shop. At 17.00 we went to watched Pororo 3D. Pororo is a cartoon icon of Korea. The movie was short, only about 20 minutes. It was in Korean and has no English subtitle. Since the movie is for children so it has simple Korean which I quite understand.

By the time Pororo 3D finished, it was already 17.30. Everland closed at 18.00 during winter and no fireworks :( We went back to Hongdae after took some more photos. Everland is a really fun place to visit, no matter what's your age.

The only thing I found that can be a barrier for foreigner is everything in here is spoken in Korean. All announcements and the officers in the rides are explain everything in Korean. All you have to do is make a confuse mimic on your face then they'll know immediately that you're not Korean and they'll try to explain to you in English. Well that's what I did if I don't understand what they were talking about.

It was quite a long journey to reach Seoul so I took some sleep on the bus. We should back to Jamsil Station again, but we got off at the wrong station! It was almost dark outside, the monitor inside the bus that usually showed the next stop station was off, so we only depended on our hearing and we heard the announcement wrongly! We didn't realize at all when we got off the bus because the bus stop situation was the same with the one in Jamsil. When we entered the subway station, we saw a pink line instead of green. Why is it pink? It should be green line. Apparently we were at Jangji Station not Jamsil -.-" So we took the pink line subway (line 8) to go to Jamsil Station, then took green line (line 2) from Jamsil to go back to Hongdae.

The night was already fall when we reached Hongdae. The place is packed with youngsters at night. Along the streets, there are some street food stalls.

street performance

We also found a Korean entertainer's food stall. As I remember his name is Yong Man. please correct me if I'm wrong.

I got sore throat that day. I've tried to look for strepsiles at convenience stores, but they were sold in drug store. Gosh! the strepsile's price in Seoul is expensive! It cost KRW 5000 for a box contains of 12 candies -.-"

We walked along Hongdae streets, did some window shopping and bought some cosmetics at Etude House. The price was so cheap! Only 1/3 price in Indonesia so we bought quite a lot. From Etude House we walked along the streets again and we passed by a food stall which has an interesting poster at the window so we decided to had dinner there. We had changpong. It's a hot spicy seafood noodle soup. A perfect food for a cold night.

Then we went to Hello Kitty Cafe. All decorations including the paper cup, foods and beverages are all in Hello Kitty theme. I had green tea latte with Hello Kitty coffee art on it. Cute!

Just across the Hello Kitty Cafe, we found Coffee Prince. Coffee Prince is one of MBC drama that took place mostly in a coffee house. Unfortunately the Coffee Prince was close.

Everland ticket entrance - KRW 36.000 (normal price KRW 40.000)
Churros - KRW 3000
Pasta - KRW 8000
Changpong - KRW 4900
Latte green tea at Hello Kitty Cafe - KRW 3800