Seoul-Day 5 Children’s Grand Park

***I apologize that we had to put our blogging on hold for a little bit—we do need to wrap up this Seoul story of ours to make room for more.

After our first night at Dragon Hill Lodge, I requested a bigger room. It was the same price (in fact I am wondering why we didn’t get it from the very beginning) but it had two queen beds, pull-out bed and could fit a crib. The problem we ran into on our first night was that Mark could only fall asleep in the crib were given, not on the big bed. But the crib was so tiny and squeaky that every time he moved, he would wake up. After he fell asleep I actually moved him to sleep on the blankets on the floor.

So when we got our bigger room, he could easily fall asleep in the crib and then I would move him to the pull-out bed where he’d sleep by himself all night.

Anyway, no matter what time he went to bed, Mark was still up by 6-6:30 am. And then Katya and Alex would be awake by 7 am. Basically, we were all fed and ready to go every day by 8:30 am.

On Friday, May 13th, we decided to check out  Children's Grand Park.  It was quite a long subway ride—about 45 minutes, but the kids did great. Korean ladies were all talking to Mark and gave him tons of snacks (some edamame crackers).

The first thing we did when we got to the Park was go to the Amusement Rides area.

I couldn’t believe how many rides they squished into a rather small area. It worked out great for us though because then the kids didn’t complain about walking too much. We got a ticket for Katya, Alex, Robert and Mark was free. I was the supervisor. We split up and Robert took Mark on all the kiddie rides, while Katya and Alex went on some crazy ones. They are not afraid of anything! 

Mark loved going on those trucks:)

And the Ferris wheel…

And the carousel which was a really cool double-decker one!

Robert tried to race him with no luck.

Katya liked this ride a lot—the boats go up and down while spinning around.

And Robert thought of his deep see fishing trip in FL…

Our blond/brown haired kids were quite an attraction:) We were the only non-Asian foreigners in the whole park.

We think Friday is like their National Field Trip day or something because there were hundreds of kids from schools and preschools. I guess they dress their kids in the same outfits to spot them easily, just like Japanese do. Cute!

After three hours at the Amusement Park part, we started walking towards the Zoo part. This Children’s Park is huge! The zoo was free, and it had some really cool animals, even an elephant.     

By then the kids were getting tired and we needed to get lunch. The place we found had two sections—one, where you ordered hamburgers/chicken burger and fries, and the other where you ordered Korean food. At first, I came up to the hamburger one and started to order, but the cashier said it would take about 30 minutes for order to be done. I guess there all these kids on field trips were getting their food from this place…I ended up getting four different dishes from the Korean part which turned out to be quite tasty….you just never know what exactly you are eating:)

I love this picture that Robert took while waiting for lunch.

Finally, we walked over to the playground to let the kids run around. There were at least a hundred kids there, but still plenty of room. Katya and Alex spend half and hour just sitting and digging in the sand—they were exhausted:)

The weather was gorgeous! It was nice to be just walking through this beautiful park. On the way out, we saw this “musical” fountain. I am not sure if there is a musical show in the evenings or something, but there was no music when we were there. The fountain changed its patterns on a timer. The kids loved this spot, especially because we bought them ice cream:) (Korean ice cream is sooooo yummy!!!)

And of course, a family picture by the fountain.

It was around 3:30 pm when we parted our ways. Robert took the kids back to the hotel and to the pool. I went to Dongdaemum Market where all I found was socks, underwear, work out clothes and pets. All I bought was two umbrellas:)

You may wonder why we would go to amusement parks and zoos while exploring Seoul. First, we don’t have anything cool like that anywhere near where we live right now. Misawa is very remote from this kind of entertainment for kids. Secondly, we have learned that in order for us and the kids not to go crazy, we need to keep mixing things up—monuments and palaces with playgrounds and parks.

Lyana