Hiking at Jangtaesan
A little day trip from Seoul is Jangtaesan Recreational Forest (장태산자연휴양림). I took the KTX from Yongsan Station to Seodaejeon Station. It took a little over an hour to get there. From the station, I was going to take the bus, but it comes so infrequently that I ended up taking a taxi instead. However, there are two buses (bus 20 and bus 22) that go to the forest.
The park has a lot of metasequoia trees, which make the forest look so pretty. Some of the trees were starting to turn colors. It will look super beautiful in the coming weeks. I walked to the Sky Tower, around to Jeonmangdae, and then down to Palmajeong. The park was surprisingly smaller than it appeared on the map. I had dressed for colder weather, but it was decently warm so my friends and I had to take some layers off.
There is a pavilion at Palmajeong. We had brought lunch and snacks with us, so we got out our picnic mat and sat down. The view was amazing, the weather was perfect, and there was no one around.
After finishing our picnic, we had to wait a while for the bus, so we walked around a bit. Since the area is in the mountains, it looked like golden hour was already hitting, so it was so picturesque.
Then, I took the bus into town and we had been planning on going to Interview but it was so crowded when we arrived that we just went next door to Date 0411 Cafe. The drinks were refreshing and we got to watch the college students playing soccer. It was pretty chilly so we went inside and ordered some yummy pizza and fries.