palce
Monday, January 30, 2017
Saturday, January 14, 2017
Korea Day 3 Eastern Gyeonggi-do: Garden of Morning Calm, Petite France, Nami Island & Gangchon Rail Park c/o Trazy
Since the idea of our trip is to visit as many places as
possible (which later on we realized that’s not always advisable), we tried to
coincide as many nearby attractions as we can in our itinerary. On our 3rd day, we
explored the eastern part of Gyeonggi-do which includes Garden of The Morning
Calm, Petite France, Nami Island & Gangchon Rail Park.
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| Garden of the Morning Calm |
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| Petite France |
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| Nami Island |
Our original plan is to take the Gapyeong Cirlce Tour Bus which will pick and drop us to and from the following attractions: The Garden of The Morning Calm, Petite France, and Nami Island. But then, we found another interesting activity– Gangchon Rail Park which is also located in the eastern part of Gyeonggi-do.
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| Map of Gyeonggi-do |
Gapyeong Circle Tour Bus has a fixed schedule for dropping
and picking its passengers to and from the tourists’ attractions. You can check
here for the schedule I've found from a travel blog. If we’d take the circle tour bus, we won’t be able to ride the rail bike in
Gangchon so we decided to look for another alternative.
Luckily, we came across trazy while planning the trip. They have a lot
of tour offers you can check from their site. The price (92USD) for the four
attractions is reasonable enough and it was pretty convenient for tourists like us who
don’t have time to waste.
The first stop is The Garden
of the Morning Calm. It was one of my favorites – maybe because, it was not too
crowded, the flowers are so beautiful, the wind is so refreshing, and the
calming effect of the mountains is incomparable. 😊
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| Taking a photo with the maple leaves |
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| View a little up |
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| Where the Bonsai's are located |
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| The Autumn Vibe 😆 |
The second stop is Petite France. Petite France has been one
of the most favorite shooting spots of Korean Dramas – popular dramas such as
My Love from the Star (Kim So Hyun & Jeon Ji Hyeon) and Secret Garden (Hyun
Bin & Ha Ji Won); and recent dramas I’ve watched – Go Ho Starry Night & Oh My Geum Bi. It’s a theme park, featuring the iconic Little Prince
novel of Saint Exupery and the Eiffel Tower in France. Literally like a
‘little’ France (Petite France).
Third stop we have Nami Island. It was literally on another
island since you have to ride the ferry for around 10 minutes to get there.
Nami Island is the famous shooting spot of Winter Sonata.
Last but not the least, around 6pm in the evening we reached
Gangchon Rail Park. This is why I wouldn’t recommend putting the 4 itineraries
in 1 day. The rail bike ride has been more enjoyable if we got to see the evergreen
trees, the river & the mountains along the way, because that’s what we’ve
been looking forward also. Nevertheless, we enjoyed every bit of the day.
Thanks, Trazy! J
TRAVEL TIP: If you want to fully enjoy the rail bike,
schedule it in the morning. It gets a little scary also since you cannot see
the path clearly when it’s already dark. 😉
