Day 2 – 17 April Sunday

Up, shower & breakfast at 8am then a walk in a crisp sunny smog (or Seoul fresh air) of downtown Songdo.  This area is a new “Tomorrow City” the motel we stayed in surrounded by lots of vacant blocks (ready for a forest of high rise buildings). The parks have been built first & they are really amazing, beautiful walkways, watercourses, bridges, fountains, cyclepaths, pergolas, all next to wide roads with hardly any traffic.  The high rise buildings are architectural masterpieces, buildings that look as though they are leaning, windows with basketweave design, cut-off angles on buildings, radical looking designs some have futuristic night displays. It really puts Canberra & Australia to shame with our box high rises.  They are really are doing things in style in this new city.  The whole place being built fully from the ground up.  The railways are already underground.  The centrepiece is an artificial lake surrounded by man-made hills planted with great gardens with pathways meandering all the way around, with feature rocks everywhere.  This area was originally all swampland that was flat, again, a credit to the forethought of the planners, it has all been done on a grand scale.

Next to the lake was a bible scene recreation area, they had a major Christian religious event here some time ago & the amount of effort & the length they went to creating the scenes is amazing.  For example, the whale that swallowed Jonah is huge & made up from thousands of tiny glass bottles filled with different coloured water.  The temple is made from thousands of porcelain plates, all tied to scaffolding with string.  The animals in the Garden of Eden are all very well made from material over a wire frame, the parting of the waters is also extremely well done, as is all of the myriads of other bible scenes.  There was hardly a soul wandering around when we were there, the exhibition looked as though it had closed many months ago.

We wandered back to the motel, packed & were in the foyer by 10.15 for the bus back to the airport.  Inside Seoul airport terminal we wandered around looking at some of the duty-free shops & were treated to a show of a royal Korean wedding, with guards in traditional costume, the King & Queen, the consorts & the bridal couple all in traditional Korean costume parading around the airport terminal.  Wow what an amazing & colourful treat.  Tereza even got to learn some traditional Korean craftwork at a Korean cultural store. We enjoyed our short stay in Korea & wished that we would have spent more time exploring the country & culture.

We boarded Korean Air KE907 at 1.15pm & took off at 1.30pm for the 12 hour flight for London where we landed at 5.30pm local time.  By the time we got into London from Heathrow, checked in & got to our room in the Thistle Hotel at Marble Arch, right in the city, it was 8.45pm local time.  A quick shower & crashed in bed, the flight is so tiring, sitting in one spot for so long, though they did have a good selection of movies on the personal LCD TV we each had.  The Korean meals on the plane were also very good. The service, food & even seating & leg room was good, A 1 to the Korean  Airlines.