The 1988 Summer Olympics were hosted in Seoul. Although the Olympics are long gone from Seoul, the city has done a great job preserving the park and using it as a green space for locals and tourists to enjoy. I have visited the Olympic Parks and Olympic Stadiums in Sarajevo, Barcelona, Munich and Montreal, but this one tops them all! Best part is that it is free! You can easily spend an afternoon here exploring, and doing fun things. Here is just a sample of what our day was like.
The park is pretty big, so if you want to see everything the park has to offer, I would suggest going on a day when you don’t have anything else planned. We were there for 4 hours, and there was still one part of the park that we did not see.
An easy and fun way to get around the park is to rent a rickshaw. It costs 10,000 won for 30 minutes or 15,000 won for an hour. We rented one for an hour and had a blast! It was a great workout and a fun way to see the park.
And we weren’t the only ones enjoying our rickshaw ride…
Alternatively you can rent a two person bike, but I am not sure what the prices are for these.
One thing I noticed and loved was the beautiful luscious green grass. The only place in Canada (besides people’s backyards) that I have seen such green grass is at golf courses. Some of you might be thinking “what a strange thing to notice” but let me tell you, after being surrounded by concrete for the past two months, seeing grass and walking on it was a treat!
A fun thing to do for you history and geography buffs is to walk around all the flags. Here you can spot some flags of countries that are no longer in existence, such as Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia.
I would recommend coming here in the later part of the day (we arrived at 4) so you can see the park at night as well (and avoid the afternoon summer heat). The area by the Peace Gate is beautifully lit up and it is a nice way to end the day.
Getting There: To get to the Olympic Park, take the subway line 5 to the Olympic Park station (exit 3) or line 8 to Mongchontoseong station (exit 1). As always, be sure to use the Seoul Subway App to figure out how to get here from where you are.
For more information, be sure to check out the official Visit Korea website.
Happy Travels Everyone!
great idea for a way to spend and afternoon!