Saturday, July 22, 2006
Hwaseong Fortress
Today, Sam and I went to Hwaseong Fortress in Suwon (4 subway stops from Osan). If I could think of one word to describe today (besides "fun") it would be - WALKING!! Here's how much walking we did: We left our apartment and walked to the subway station. After arriving in Suwon, we decided we were to cheap to pay $1.50 for the bus, and that we'd rather walk from the station to the fortress...turned out to be about 3 km. Once there, we walked around the entire fortress wall - 5.7 km. Then, we walked back to the station - another 3 km. And once back in Osan, back to our apartment. What a great, active day, eh! The walking was definitely worth it though, because we found a Dunkin Donuts, and used the money we saved on bus fare to buy ourselves a little treat...so good!!
The fortress was awesome...very old (originally built in 1794, but a lot of it has been restored since then), and very pretty!
This is near the start of our walk around the fortress wall. Behind Sam is the "West Gate" - called "Hwaseomun".
This is me in front of the fortress floodgate. It was so hot out today that I was tempted to get in the water. There were actually a few kids on the other side of the building behind me who were playing around in the stream.
It was kind of funny because we were walking around this super old structure, and yet, on either side of the wall the city was bustling around us. This is Sam looking down on some Suwon traffic.
This was my favourite place of the fortress. We had to take our shoes off in order to go up the stairs to this pavillion, where we enjoyed a little shade and a granola bar. The view from this place was spectacular - a beautiful pond and willow trees were directly behind and below. Could have stayed here all day!
Here we are in front of one of the many other pavilions...a self-portrait using the camera timer...sorry about the fact that it's a little crooked!# posted by Becky @ 10:34 PM 
