Day 41: Seoullo 7017

This morning Cori, our American friend from KLI lvl 3, messaged us, asking if we wanted to join her going to 서울로 7017 (Seoullo 7017) after her class ended today. For some reason, her teacher hadn't cancelled class like every one else even though these days are 추석연휴 (Chuseok holidays).

"What is Seoullo 7017?" you might wonder.

Seoullo 7017 started out in the 70's as an elevated road built to connect the two sides around Seoul station. It was closed off to traffic and was instead turned into a pedestrian walking experience.
There's an artistic computer-made video about it here.

We got off the subway at Seoul station and went up the spiral stairs shown in the 3rd picture.

Oh yea, here's Cori! I don't think I've shown pictures of her before.

Once up the stairs, we were there! The construction stretches pretty far and you can get up there from several points.

It was so bright! My eyes aaaaaa

The place was full of plants. I can only imagine how beautiful it must be when everything is in bloom. It's technically fall here so some of the plants weren't as lively as they could be.

There are solar driven light poles that supposedly light up blue during the evenings. I wished we could have seen it but tonight we had other plans.

It was great smelling the flowers. Sometimes you need to stop and enjoy the small things.

There's a scene here where people can perform. Sadly, there was no one playing while we were there.

I recognized this plant!
I told Cori and Celine how us kids on my street would usually eat the fruits/berries from this plant (after, of course, removing the itching powder part inside).
Celine had never eaten them (I thought everyone had) but she instead told us how some boys in her class put the powder down another boy's shirt and how he itched for a long time afterwards.

I liked this sign.

One part of the road was filled with flowers like these.

Ah this kid! There were a couple of these glass holes where you could look down. This kid crawled into the middle on the biggest one and his parents were standing on the side, asking him to come over to them because they were too afraid to go and get him. They were laughing and pleading to him and it was really cute to watch.

And there were trampolines for the kids!

There was a really great view from up there.

Another looking hole! I saw a car pass by under me right after taking this picture.

The round place here was a small café and upstairs was a lookout post. Outside the café was a paddling pool.

I had to have picture from on top of the café ~

Cori and I were hungry so we all went into Seoullo Terrace to look for food. It seemed a bit pricey though so we took the subway back to Sinchon.

In Sinchon we went into another one of the three small restaurants that Wonjun had showed us some time ago.

After eating, Celine asked if we felt like dessert or something to drink. Of course. I always feel like eating dessert.

Tonight we were going to eat with Sulli (순리), the guy we met at the flower market, and a friend of his. Since we didn't have to go back to the dorm before that and Cori had no plans, we just sat down at the terrace at Holly's Coffee and enjoyed the view.

I got a piece of this suuuuper dark-chocolate-tasting cake.

The sun went down as we were sitting there~

We met Sulli (순리) and his friend at the station. You couldn't have a better mix. Sulli is a traditional music major and his friend, whose name I forgot, is into hiphop and rap and told us he was going to record his album tomorrow.

The friend, let's call him 'rapper friend,' bowed deeply several times when we first met them and later gave us both a present when we sat down to eat chicken.

Sulli (순리) to the left and his rapper friend to the right!
They were super nice to talk to! Our conversation was a great mix of Korean and English.

The rapper friend's present to us! We both got a pair of socks and a bookmark.

I don't know what it is with Koreans and random presents the first time they meet people but.. these are super cute hahah.

After eating, the rapper friend went home. He was going to record early the next day, which was also the reason he didn't join us for beer during dinner.

Sulli took us to an old, underground place that even a lot of Koreans didn't know about. He told us that the owner had spent 35 years collecting all the LPs on display behind the bar. The music played there were these LPs and it was just a taaaaaaaad too loud. We were practically shouting to each other in Korean/English.

Celine and Sulli bonded over their love for One Piece and we all decided to go for a movie Wednesday night after his working shift was over.

I went to bed with a killer headache that night because of the music. I believe Celine did the same. Holy cow.
But nice place!