We had a relative long stretch of time to spend in Seoul during this trip. And as this was our second time to South Korea, we were deliberately trying to avoid doing similar things, even though the previous trip was 18 years ago now. One of the perhaps less commonly taken up day trip is one to see the real-life filming locations of K-dramas: specifically the Irwol Botanic Garden in the city of Suwon, and also the Wind Turbines in the city of Ansan. And just to get out of the way, no, the missus had not seen the K-dramas filmed at these two locations, but we just wanted to find different to do in our fourth day trip out of Seoul! We booked this trip through Klook and was assigned a driver on this private tour.
The Botanical Garden is actually an arboretum, and it gained popularity as the filming location for the k-drama ‘Queen of Tears’. The place was about an hour drive from Seoul and we reached the garden early at 9:20AM – before its opening hour of 9:30AM. The city seemed to have seen a fair bit of snow, while the several days we’ve been in Seoul so far have seen no such. There were still patches of white in the park where the arboretum is in, and the water in the basin of the water fountain had frozen solid.
Pictures!
The last two pictures above are of Irwol Park and outside the arboretum. There was little to see in the park during this winter season, with most of the flora were in dormant state, and there seemed to be ongoing maintenance on the outside. One can probably spend an hour in the arboretum itself before you’d run out of things to see. Our next location was the Seohaerang Jebu Marine Cable Car. To be continued!