Day 86: Hwarangdae Station & Gongneungdong Park

Tickets for the Hong Kong stop of BTS' world tour went on sale today so Ella set herself up at a PC Bang (internet cafe) to try and get one. I decided to go to another place that Namjoon had tweeted about. It was up near the northern end of Seoul in an area I had never been to. Namjoon's pictures made it look like a nice place to walk around and I really wanted to just wander and listen to music today so it was the perfect place to go. It took 40 minutes to get to the subway station (Taereung). I found an Ediya Coffee near the station and got a tea to drink while I walked around. I had no idea where he had taken the pictures so I decided to just walk around and see if I could find any cool places. I found some old railway tracks and walked along those for a bit.

After walking along the tracks for a few minutes I found a bunch of signs. One of them showed the trails that go along the entire edge of Seoul. I think that walking along the entire trail (in bits and pieces) would be such a fun adventure and it's definitely on my list of things to do next time I am in Korea.

Another sign showed that there was a park and abandoned train station a little further along the path. The train station sounded like an interesting place to check out so I walked in the direction of it and passed the park on the way. The park had a small waterpark and a mini golf course!

The train station is called Hwarangdae. Trains don't use the station anymore so it has turned into a kind of museum/abandoned train yard. When I got to the first train I realized that this was one of the places where Namjoon had taken a picture. I have no idea what I thought was behind him in the photos, but it made so much sense that it was train cars after I saw them. I also realized that I could actually go inside the cars and I had fun looking in them and taking a few pictures.

I wandered further along the tracks and found more trains and a bright coloured station.

There was also a military academy behind the station.

I decided to wander back to where I started after I had looked around the station. The trail I took to get to the train station continued further in both directions. I had seen on my map that there was an art theme street somewhere back near the station that I arrived at earlier this afternoon and I wanted to see that. The sky was so pretty as I was walking back and I took a ridiculous number of photos. I found the art street and realized that this was also the place where Namjoon had taken his other photos.

It was a very relaxing way to spend my afternoon and I was very happy that I found this place. The train station was super cool and I loved all the street art! While I was walking along the street I suddenly got this stream of random letters and messages from Ella because she had finally gotten a ticket. The site had been hacked at 11 this morning when she first tried to get them so she had to wait until 3 pm to try again and she was super stressed. I was able to go to the Hamilton stop of the Love Yourself tour and it was such an amazing concert. I'm so happy that she had got tickets and can experience it as well! We decided to meet up in Itaewon to go out for dinner and celebrate. When we arrived we ended up walking around the alleys for an hour or so and taking pictures with all the graffiti.

We walked all the way to the Line Friends store and went in so Ella could buy one of the BT21 headbands.

We were pretty hungry by this point so we tried to find a place to eat at. I had been craving fried chicken for a few days now and there happened to be a chicken place that wasn't too far away. We were able to get 4 different sauces for the chicken and it was so yummy!

Hope everyone is doing well,

Emily

(December 20, 2018)