We have had a really fun end of February here. I think we've done enough in the past month to make up for the lack of activity we had after Christmas, because we were exhausted after the Lunar New Year (Seollal) holiday! We had a blast with some great friends, so I'd like to finish my catch up on our vacation adventures. We spent a Saturday in Suwon, on the very southwest side of the city, almost in another province. While it was bleak and gloomy weather the day we went, and we froze our butts off almost the entire time, we had a BLAST - the pictures turned out so well that you'll just have to forgive the following photo dump of awesome shots, courtesy of Taggart.
First, you have to remember that as is the case with everything Korean, the old and the new are perfectly juxtaposed wherever you go. The main Hwaseong gate is smack dab in the middle of a roundabout, but it's very well preserved. You can walk the grounds of the temporary palace that was used by the King when he visited the tomb of his father in the 1700s. (I should also mention that I HIGHLY recommend befriending a Korean History PhD holder and go with them to things like this - we could just point at something and ask our friend what it meant, and he would give a full account of the historical context and symbolism, etc. on the object...Awesome.) The palace is in the middle, and the fortress, ramparts, and walls encircle a 5-km radius around it. You can walk around the whole thing, which of course is what we did! Save for a bit at the end, it is still connected.
Here is the main gate. (I've definitely become more Korean with my posing....)
The original stones are easy to spot.
Here is the entrance to the wall. It only costs 1,000 W to get in ($1.00).
We took a few minutes to tour the nearby Buddhist temple (mainly to compare it to the one we stayed at). This one was slightly bigger, but not kept up as well. The Sunim was very nice to us, and he made sure we saw all the details:
The bell tower and all of the intricate details:
The folk art and depiction of Buddha's training. I actually know the story/fable of the Tiger and the Rabbit from teaching my kids - there's a storybook we read in class about it. The Sunim was impressed that I knew about it :)
The temple's coolest icon was the HUGE gold Buddha statue it had in the courtyard. You can just make out Carl at the bottom of the picture! It was really beautiful, and at the bottom there were the four guardians. The work was really ornate.
We went back to the trail to begin the wall trek - so many stairs!!! haha I told Carl that he needs to come hike the Manitou Incline since he made us trek up all these stairs! ;) The view from the top was well worth it, though it was a tad foggy.
The trail was really nice, we got a lovely view the whole way around. There was a memorial to the tomb of the king's father, and a sweet dragon tram/trolley, which we didn't take, sadly. We took a picture of it specifically for our train loving nephews in Maryland, because we know it would be well appreciated there!
We hiked down the hill a bit to see the palace first:
What should we see as we exited the palace but an E.T. mural??? haha
We stopped to warm up at a cafe, and then bolstered ourselves for the hike back up to the northern lookout, and then begin the rest of the trek around the wall. The top was BEAUTIFUL:
I love this pic. The perspective is so cool. Taggart's so good at framing shots!
The palace grounds are much less of a maze from up top:
Taggart really wanted a photo of me looking out from the rampart. The stairs were really steep!
My sweet vengeance for the pensieve-lookout-photo-shoot, resulted in this:
But we took a selfie, so all was good in the world! Here are our friends Alora and Carl.
So begins the enslaught of wall shots. There were several different posts, gates, and lookouts while we walked around. Some slots were for arrows, some were to pour boiling hot liquid on your enemies, and others were to dump flaming sewage on trespassers (lovely, I know). Enjoy!
The wall was taller than me! I understood what short people go through, and so I took every opportunity to get a peek outside through the gaps in the wall:
Where's Danielle? - Ancient-Fortress-Edition:
Where's Taggart? - Ancient-Fortress-Edition: (I'm a much better hider, apparently)
The banes of Taggart's existence would have been much greater had he lived before 1900:
The rounded walls created natural choke points at the gate, so that strategically they were harder to be overtaken.
You can really see the rebuilding efforts vs. the original stones here. It's been restored and maintained wonderfully, but I love still seeing the remnants of the original and how the aging process has affected the details:
I should also note that this is one of the places we've actually seen vast grassy landscapes since coming here.
Making the final stretch back towards the main gate, we saw this HUGE Catholic church.
Heading back to the station, we grabbed some fried chicken of course!
Carl said when he was here on his mission, none of this was as developed:
What an awesome outdoor playground experience we had in Suwon - everyone told us to make a day out of it, but I had no idea it would be that extensive or sport such powerful silhouettes. It was a trip to remember, and for only the cost of a subway ride and a pack of gum, it was WELL worth it!
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