It recently was a very long weekend here in South Korea with it being Children’s day and then Buddha’s birthday! So Kyle and I had a 4 day weekend where we go to do lots of fun stuff! So for one of our days we decided to take a 2.5 hr train to a place called Yangsu!
Yangsu is a farm land North East of Seoul and is about a 3 hr train ride. The Yangsu area is becoming a popular area for city people to get away and do some mountain trail hiking, cycling and even other sport activities like water skiing and ATV riding! It also is becoming very popular with couples in Korea because it has this cute area that is dedicated to walking around and enjoying the landscape work. It has a botanical garden that follows along a lake which is absolutely gorgeous. At the end of the garden you can walk across a historical boat bridge and then see a 400 year old tree! It really was a wonderful place. You could easily spend a full day in Yangsu enjoying walks and discovering biking trails where you can even rent bikes for the day!
The down side is that Yangsu is still under construction in most areas and isn’t the most foreigner friendly with english. However it is a simple enough place to get around without knowing any Korean.
So how do you get to Yangsu? If you are in Seoul you will want to take the most convenient subway like to get to Wangsimni station. At the station you want to get onto the light blue line going towards Hoegi. Stay on this train until Yangsu station. *A few stops before Yangsu station, the train will come to a stop and tell everyone to get off, here you will get off with everyone else. You want to get to the other tracks across from your tracks, so go up the escalators and cross over to the other tracks, then hope on the train going the same direction you were heading before. Its continues to Yangsu station.* Get off at Yangsu station and head to exit number 1 (There are no other exits). When you get out of the station you should be facing a small building of multiple restaurant’s, cafes and a rental bike shop. We went to the restaurant on the top of this building which was soooo delicious! You then can walk across the street the the restaurants, then cross the street to your left and follow the trail along the lake. It will take you to a busy road with a bridge. You will see a tall old looking building with a gate area, head in there and you will find the ticket area to get into the Yangsu botanical park area. It costs $4 a person to get in ( I think…). Once you pay you are good to go and explore everything we saw!