Cherry Blossom Fan of the Day: The Little Girl With A Bag

She must have been very excited to see the cherry blossoms at Namsan (Mt. Nam) in Seoul.  She was dragging her small, purple trolley bag going up along the lane full of cherry blossoms. She was all bundled up in a red jacket, too.

And she caught everyone's attention, including mine. She seemed serious to catch the cherry blossoms that she really packed up for spring.

I am sure she enjoyed the rest of the day under those cherry blossom trees with her family. And to this little girl with a bag, enjoy the rest of spring!

My Tree of the Day: Cherry Blossoms!

Well, since it's spring time, and everyone seems cheerful nowadays, I am choosing these cherry blossom trees next to our office as, well, instead of photo of the day, it's the tree of the day!

For the past week, when they seemed to have fully bloomed, they capture the attention of everyone passing by. Today, I even heard an ajumma exclaiming how pretty they were.

So, as everyone else in the building has already gone for the weekend and must be preparing to enjoy the cherry blossoms at the most popular spots in Yeouido and Namsan, I'm still stuck somewhere in the building. Ha-ha-ha! 

And if you are heading out tomorrow, too. Here's another spot where you can catch the cherry blossoms at a less crowded spot in Seoul:


 http://apinoyinkorea.blogspot.kr/2015/04/seoul-national-cemetery-my-new-cherry.html

As it is definitely the most popular spring bloom this weekend, it's just fair to name the cherry blossoms as the tree of the week!

Seoul National Cemetery: A Less Crowded Cherry Blossom Spot In Seoul!

I just found a new spot to see the cherry blossoms in Seoul!

If I go to Yeouido, I will be elbowing against a million other people while walking the five-kilometer cherry blossom lane behind the National Assembly grounds. So, there's no Yeouido for me this year. I have visited Yeouido on a few occasions during the cherry blossom festival, when the roads leading to the area are usually blocked off to vehicular traffic. The crowds have to walk from the Yeouinaru Station, and the buses going there are usually full.

A good time though to visit Yeouido would be at night when there are less crowds. But the problem at night is the organizers turn off the colored lights at midnight, just when everyone else is still enjoying the night stroll. I wonder if they will turn off the lights at midnight again this year.

                                   (Time for spring!)

                    (A kid running to join the soldiers' parade)

Other than the cherry blossoms, you can always visit the flowery areas along the mountain trails in Seoul. There's actually one near my neighborhood. Maybe I should visit Eungbong-san (Mt. Eungbong) this time. It's famous for its yellow forsythias this time of the year.

      (Crisp in their uniforms and precise in their cadence)

           (The exhibit includes facts about the Korean War)

There's another option: Nam-san, right in my neighborhood. This area is actually closer to home, and I can even ride a bus going up. To see the cherry blossoms, I can just walk down from the Seoul Tower area and follow the cherry blossom trail down to the Yongsan Library. This way, it's less tiring, but I think there will be a lot of people, too. Not only on the trail going down, but also on the ride going up!

If you want to take the Yellow Namsan Bus, I suggest you wait for it at the bus stop at Hangangjin Station, or maybe at the Chungmuro Station. Why? Because if you wait at the bus stops near Nam-san, it would already be full.

                        (Showing off their combat skills and 
                          their colorful traditional costumes)

But not too many people in Seoul know that there's another spot to catch the cherry blossoms. This place is not only near, it's also less crowded, airy, and they have a spring festival with a military parade and exhibits!

Where is it?

          (Crowds watching the parade and performances)

(Turn the beat around, love to hear percussion!)

It's the Seoul National Cemetery in the Dongjak District!

I visited the Seoul National Cemetery in the fall when the colors of the leaves were changing. The place was serene and quiet. Unlike other open spaces and parks in Seoul, putting up a kiosk to sell drinks and snacks is prohibited. This place was worth another visit; I will return in spring.

             (Cherry blossoms and a less crowded street)

              (Cherry blossoms and dramatic landmarks)

          (Thousands of tombstones for the fallen heroes)

I guess in spring, the Seoul National Cemetery will have more visitors as it celebrates a festival in time when the cherry blossoms bloom. The festival is complete with a military parade where soldiers show off their precision march while they wear their pristine uniforms and accompanied by a drum and bugle corps. If you're there, for a moment, you'd forget that this area is a cemetery, where heroes and martyrs are laid in honor, respect, and memory, and where solemnity is observed all the time. But as part of their calendar, the cemetery's administration celebrates the heroism of the fallen by having this festival of parades, performances and reenactments of ancient wars by soldiers in colorful traditional costumes.  Around the grounds, there are also displays of the Korean War relics to show the present generation actual artifacts from the Korean War.

If you decide to catch the cherry blossoms at the Seoul National Cemetery, just take the Subway Line 4 or Line 9, and get off at Dongjak Station. From Exit 8, the entrance is a few meters out. But unlike Yeouido, you can bring your car!

And since you're there, after going around to see the cherry blossoms, why don't you also visit the Memorial Tower where names and portraits of the fallen heroes and martyrs are placed. And behind it are sectioned areas that contain thousands of tombs of these heroes, where you would always see family members offering flowers and messages as a sign that these heroes are never forgotten.    

So, there. I just shared with you a new spot to catch the cherry blossoms in Seoul this spring. 

Have fun!

                                     *   *   *   *   *

Seoul National Cemetery's website:

http://www.snmb.mil.kr/mbshome/mbs/snmb_eng/index.jsp

April 1 is the Last Day of Cherry Blossoms in Seoul!

Last night's heavy rain in Seoul washed away most of the blooms from the cherry blossom trees, and today, April 1, we might see the last of the cherry blossoms this season because of the surprisingly windy weather since this morning. 

A few days ago, these lucky office workers in the Yeouido area were fortunate to have been able to take photographs of the blooms before they fell off. They were lucky, indeed. But I wonder if I would also be lucky enough to run to the Yeouido area after work to catch the last falling petals.

Oh well, if I wouldn't be able to today, there's always next year. 

Sigh. :-(

Cherry Blossoms....From Nam-san With Love!

I would have wanted to quote James Bond's From Russia With Love, but we're not in Russia. We're in Korea! Specifically, in Seoul!

So, the cherry blossoms have all gone. Unfortunately for some international tourists who arrived late in Korea,  no tree in Seoul bears those white, pink flowers anymore. The blooms have lasted for about a little longer than two weeks, during which time millions of Seoulites and tourists have taken millions of photos and selfies.

Although the most popular spot to enjoy the blooms in Seoul is at Yeouido, the other spot which I always recommended is at Nam-san.  

So, on one of the weekends when the cherry blossoms were in full bloom, I dropped by the War Memorial of Korea and took a few photos from that vantage. I think that's the only spot which I could take a photo from, showing the whole mountain. Unless, of course, I break into someone's apartment near Huam-dong in the Yongsan District and take a photo from their window, or rooftop. Ha-ha-ha! 

I didn't anymore go up the mountain to see the blooms. I was sure thousands must also be up there, and I didn't want to join that huge crowd. Been there, done that. But from my spot at the Memorial, I wondered what it would have looked like had the mountain been planted with more cherry blossoms. I could see the cherry blossoms that lined up that one-way road going down from the NSeoul Tower. One can either walk the trail going up or down. Some bike their way up. This path is actually narrow and is being used by the yellow Nam-sam buses as well as the tourist buses. 

So, if you want to take a picture in the middle of the road, you have to watch out for these buses. Otherwise, the bus driver (and all his passengers!) would photobomb your sweet, romantic picture with your boyfriend or girlfriend. Ha-ha-ha!

But once you got that picture, it always will be from Nam-san...with love!

Of Avengers And Super Heroes

Seoul has been busy hosting scenes from the Avengers: Age of Ultron this past week. And like most Hollywood movie fans in the city, I also wondered whether I would be able to take a peek on an actual movie shoot for a blockbuster Hollywood movie. I have seen Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise and Nicolas Cage during their movie premieres in Seoul over the years. I thought of adding a few more Hollywood names to that list.

So, when the city government published the dates and the locations where the scenes would be shot, I thought of maybe dropping by...uninvited. Ha-ha-ha!

         (Crowds watching the shoot on the Mapo Bridge)

                                   (The Mapo Bridge)

So, last Sunday, the production shot scenes on the Mapo Bridge. Like all of the locations in Seoul where the scenes were scheduled to be shot, one side of the Mapo Bridge was closed to both vehicular and pedestrian traffic. 

Luckily, I didn't have to take the public transport heading towards the Mapo Bridge. My friend Andrew, who was attending a wedding in the Sinsa-dong area with his friends that Sunday morning, offered to pick me up from Hannam-dong on his way back to the Mapo District where he lives.

    (Red and white boats sitting idly below the Mapo Bridge)

But instead of going straight to the Mapo area, we instead decided to hang out at the Yeouido Park, which actually has a good vantage of the Mapo Bridge. On our way to the park, I could see that most cherry blossoms had already bloomed ahead of the forecast. This was the reason why last weekend, the organizers of the annual Yeouido Flower Festival immediately advanced the starting date of the festival by a week. There wouldn't be any blossoms left on the original opening date had they not done so.

                       (A portraitist and his works of art)

When we finally found a parking spot and started walking towards the Mapo Bridge, we saw lots of people already swarming at the park:  couples, groups of friends and families, including their pets! Moms pushing their babies on strollers, granddads and grandmoms playing with their grandkids, fathers helping a son fly his kite and even moms riding bikes with daughters.

That day, the spring weather was perfect for everyone to get out of their homes and spend time with their families outdoors. 

               (A flyboarder amuses everyone at the park)

         (I want to borrow his toy this summer. Whom to call?)

And when we got near the Mapo Bridge, we could see a few activities both on and off it. A few vehicles were visible running on the bridge, while two boats, a red and a white one, were below the exact spot where the vehicles were. Perhaps, those rescue boats were just there in case someone or something fell off the bridge. 

Other than that, people watching from a distance were just relaxing by the banks of the Han River, perhaps curious like me in case there was some big action scene with an explosion that would be seen from where we were. 

                 (They looked amazing as they moved
              through the Han River on their flyboards.)

What actually amused me and the crowds at Yeouido Park that morning was not the Avengers 2 shoot on Mapo Bridge but a couple of guys performing the flyboarding on the river. 

Flyboarding is a new aqua sport where a person, whose legs are attached with the flyboard, is propelled through the air with the power of the water propulsion generated by a water craft, which in this performance at the Han River looked like a jet ski. Here is a VIDEO of their flyboarding which entertained a lot of kids...and their parents!

For a moment, Andrew and I thought that these two flyboarders were joining the Avengers 2 shooting. We thought that maybe they would travel nearer to the shoot and a few scenes would catch them performing on the river as part of the background.

But that didn't happen. They just travelled to the other side of the Yeouido Park and entertained the kids and everyone else on that side of the river. Watching them move above the water with those propelled water oozing from their boots was amazing. They flew over the water like Iron Man without the need of a suit.

I heard Chris Evans was taking part on the shoot that day at Mapo Bridge, but unfortunately, Andrew and I weren't close enough to see anything or any action hero that day.

But I realized, we didn't have to look that far to see for ourselves some super heroes. They were all right here next to us at Yeouido Park: the hardworking mother and fathers who toil during the week to provide for their families, the grandmothers who help look after their grandkids so that the kids' parents could work full time and not worry about staying at home to take care of the kids, the grandfathers who must still be working even at their old age just so he and his wife wouldn't be a burden to their children who now have their own families to take care of, or perhaps, some of these dutiful children treating their parents to lunch and to a fun day at the park as a sign of gratitude for their parents' hard work enabling them to finally finish college. 

And I think I was right.

I didn't have to look at what was happening on Mapo Bridge, where Chris Evans as Captain America might be shooting scenes as he saved the world. Real life super heroes were just around me that day, not in their super hero costumes, but in their super hero lives. On this nice spring day, they weren't saving their own world; they were spending time with the people they would save the world for.