Hiking Namhansan
Another day, another hike. It’s the season where everyone is hiking, so why not join everyone else? I had been wanting to hike this place ever since I saw it on Instagram. It has the perfect view of Seoul since it is a short distance there. Located in Gyeonggi Gwangju, it took me a little over an hour to reach it.
I took the subway from Seokchon Station to Sanseong Station. Since I hadn’t eaten anything for lunch, Lily and I stopped for brunch at a typical Korean restaurant.
There is a bus directly to the mountain from the station that runs only on the weekends. Bus 9-1 and Bus 9 run to the mountain. There were so many hikers in the subway; that’s when you know you’re near to a hiking destination. Only hikers were on the bus. I took the bus to Namhansanseong (Jong Branch) stop, which was supposed to take fifteen minutes but it might have been longer considering all the cars trying to get there.
At the mountain, there are many galleries, museums, cafes, and restaurants. It appeared to be that people would go and hike and then relax the rest of the day in that area. There were several different courses that were recommended on the map. We chose Course 1, which was projected to take an hour and twenty minutes to complete.
The first gate we came across on the hike, was completely gone because they were doing construction. There were so many older people, families, and young people. Course 1 just felt like a walk in a park since it only had a few steep hills that were easy to walk up. I have heard from a coworker that some of the other trails are more challenging. This one was very family-friendly. One area near the West Gate has the famous view of Seoul. We were quite lucky that the weather was so clear that we got an amazing view of the city.
After completing the hike, we were interested in exploring the village area. We bought tickets (2,000 won each) to enter the Emergency Palace. This palace was built for the kings to escape to in times of danger. It has been used in the past when they needed protection. It was quite small in terms of palaces, but still had all the necessary rooms.
We were quite tired by this time (especially since we’d been out all day in Gapyeong the previous day) so we searched for a cafe. While we were looking around, we came across this little garden area with some stone statues. It felt so people there with the calming classical music from a cafe across the street drifting through.
We decided upon a cafe that we had spotted when we first started our hike. The cafe, Ohroji 오로지, had a lot of antique furniture and was quite a lot bigger than I had first expected. We ordered some red bean bingsu and I also go omija ade. We relaxed a bit there before heading back to our apartments.
