Seoul 5 - Sightseeing

One of the days we took a trip to visit Ehwa Women's University, since we heard a lot about the shopping around the area and how beautiful the campus is. It was so nice! I've never seen a campus like it. The main building is set into a hill with the middle hollowed out. You can walk up through the center of the hill and on either side there are giant buildings that are underground. On top of the buildings, which is technically the hillside, are gardens that you can walk through. 

View of the campus from ground level - The main building is cut straight into the hillside. 

We also went to the Museum of Korean War, which displays artifacts from all the wars throughout Korean history. It was an interesting place, and mainly I was excited to learn more about THE Korean War, but unfortunately I wasn't able to explore the museum as much as I wanted to. One reason is that the museum is MASSIVE, but also we got stopped by this guy in the military who was working with a special art display containing pieces designed by soldiers currently in the army. The guy we chatted with had a sculpture on display, which he showed us. We then took a picture with him (which will apparently be in the newspaper !?) and he showed us around the displays on the basement level. He spoke decent English, but it took some time to make our way around the displays and when we finally got through the ancient Korean warfare section, we were feeling pretty exhausted. We rushed the rest of the museum, but I'll totally check it out again next time I'm in Seoul.

There were also some interesting outdoor displays of old Korean military equipment and amazing statues. We didn't get to see much of those either, and I really want to.

Seoul 3 - Trick Eye Museum

Right in Hongdae (the university district), where we were staying, they have a place called "The Trick Eye Museum." It's good for bigger groups of people but it's not really a place where you can go alone because the whole point of it is to take funny pictures with your friends. It's full of all these paintings that are set up to look 3D so that you can interact with them. 

First, though, we were shuttled into a freezing cold room with ice displays. They had an igloo and dolls frozen in ice (???) and an ice house with an ice toilet and ice bed. They also had an ice slide we could use. The funny thing was that before we went in we were handed blankets to wrap around ourselves. It looked super stupid but it was necessary after a few minutes in the sub-zero room. Kinda cool though !

The rest of our time there we spent wandering through the trick eye museum displays. Some of them were based of of famous works of art and others were just silly. Honestly it was so much fun. I definitely recommend going even though the price is a tad bit steep (15,000 won). It's especially fun if you go with people that have a good sense of humor.