Hunting for Cherry Blossoms

The arrival of Spring in Korea is heralded by the blooming of Cherry Blossoms. The blossoms only last for a maximum of a couple of weeks, depending on the weather. Last year I missed the weekend when my friends went to the Han river park to enjoy the blossoms and ended up spending the time with bad company at the boring Cheongdo Bull Fighting festival. This year I didn't want to miss the beautiful blossoms and as we had an extra day off during the week this year (for a local election) I headed off to one of the many festivals around the country at Cheongpung hoban. It took 4 hours to get there, and once we arrived we were dismayed to find out that the organisers had postponed the start of the festival to a week afterwards because the Cherry Blossoms were later in blooming this year. What a disaster! Instead of letting the day become a total waste we decided to stay and have lunch. Nearby the festival is a large lake and tourist site. So whist on the bus back to the bus station we acted on impulse and jumped off the bus to check out the lake area. Salvaging something of the day we managed to find one tree with blossom. Success!

New dates stuck over the festival banner. Why didn't they update the website?!

Lunch!

Buds were all over the trees, just about a week too soon to see the blossoms

Snapped on the bus just before we jumped off

 

Yesss, found some blossom!

The lake and bridge are themselves considered a worthwhile reason to visit. This is also where Korea's largest bungee jump is situated.

A week later the Cherry Blossoms had fully blossomed and I headed to Hangang park (a fairly short walk from my school) to enjoy them before they disappeared (likely this weekend as it's rainy now). Once in yeouido it was pretty busy by the trees, but luckily my walk from school had taken be through relatively quiet streets lined with cherry blossom so I'd been fairly undisturbed when taking pictures. After the sun had gone down, in search of food, we stumbled upon a Sushi buffet, thus completing a day of Japanese exports. Spring is a fabulous season and it's such a shame it so short in Korea.

Walking from Daebang to Yeouido. <3

63 Building, Seoul's largest sky scraper

It took a while but I really like how this photo turned out. Can't wait to get my feet wet in this fountain on those forthcoming hot summer days.

It's difficult but not impossible to watch the sunset in Seoul.

My camera battery died but just able to snap a quick shot of the floating sushi plates!