In early Apr 2016 after visiting the secret garden at Changdeok Palace, my friend and I would like to go to Cheonggyecheon stream, which was renovated in 2003 to its present form today, it's one of the place destination that we must visit as it's quite popular for Korea's people hanging around. We planned to walk from the palace to the place, we passed by many stores and restaurants, even go cross some streets, but it seemed a never ending walk, we're so tired, we called a cab to continue
Most of taxi driver in Korea could not speak English, anyway they are very friendly, I showed him the map where we would like to go, as I also could not pronounce well Cheonggyecheon stream :-) We asked him to stop at the edge of the stream which run through downtown Seoul, it's very obvious near Cheonggye Plaza and you could see the crowd, so you would not get lost. With high spirit as finally we could find it, we took some pictures under the sunshine, we're facing the sun until we could not see our camera screen so just count on our feeling, taking picture for selfie above the stream, before we're going down to the river.
Actually there's a fountain on the beginning of the 11km modern public recreation stream, unfortunately it's not played at that time. A small water fall was quite interesting beside the stairs to go down to the river, it flew from the level of the fountain going down to the river. At the left and right side of the river were pedestrian that people could walk, but we also could sit at the stairs at the edge of the river for chatting, or just enjoying the clear water and mild weather.
We continued strolling the river, till we found some square stones put in the middle of the river for people to cross from one side to another side of the river, we took many pictures there. Then we took a rest and enjoy by sitting on the stairs at the edge of the river. Our feet were soaring as we had walked around Seoul since morning. It's a good place to take a rest and seeing others enjoy the environment with their own activity and style. Creating an environment with clean water and natural habitats was the most significant achievement of the project, it could invite more fishes & birds, also cool down the temperature.
Almost sunset so we decided to continue exploring Seoul, we tried to find toilet, all of a sudden when we went up the stairs, we're just realized that the place was really close to 20,000m2 Gwanghwamun square where we could find two statues of Admiral Yi Sun-Shin and Sejong the Great, who are great and influential people in Korean history. The square was quite huge, I tried to take photos while jumping, unfortunately my friend had difficulty to catch it, lucky finally my friend could get my jump after several jumps. Some tends were available on the square, we didn't visit them, it seemed they were selling something, we're too tired to go there.
My friend was exhausted and feeling cold because it's very windy. She preferred to wait for me below at the basement where there were some shops while I was taking some pictures of beautiful colorful flowers decorating the square. The flower was quite beautiful with many colors and they arranged it well in the ellipse pots. The distance between 2 statues were very far, I walked to the front of the other statue to be able taking both statues with the flower and Bukaksan Mountain as the background. It's very difficult to get the proper angle, I had to be patient to wait for other people finished taking picture. My friend was kind enough waiting for me to finish my desire capturing all of them.
If I'll go to Korea again, definitely I would visit Cheonggyecheon stream, as I haven't explored many sides at that time, such as visiting the coffee shop along the stream.
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