Olympic Park

Seoul hosted the Olympic Games in 1988, and the Olympic Park near Jamsil is where some of the events took place, although it is more a memorial of having the games than it is the exact spot where they took place. Along the road on the way to Olympic Park, known as Olympic Row, there are a lot of huge bronze sculptures depicting various events of the Olympics: wrestling, gymnastics, and the like. It’s really close to BBro’s house, about a 10-minute walk, so we figured we should check it out. To get there, by the way, don’t go to the Subway stop called Olympic Park (no, that would be too easy), go to Mongchontoseong, on the pink line. The main “park” is a huge, open, concrete space, where people roller blade and bike. The Olympic flame is in the middle of this area, under a covering. I wonder if this is the same flame that’s been burning since 1988? On the sides of the park are trees, under which old people sleep (Hopefully they were asleep, I didn’t get to close…)

Penetrating the park further, there are the most AMAZING sculpture gardens, crazy beautiful sculptures like I’ve never seen before. There is a Museum of Modern Art in the park as well, which is hosting a Pop Art exhibit, so a lot of these sculptures were probably commissioned by the museum, or they are by artists who were shown in the museum.
Right across from the museum, we saw a train ride, which looked like the most fun thing is Seoul. We were about to get on, because we thought it was free, but we saw people with tickets, so we set off to find those – always such an ordeal, everything we do. We found a kiosk, and got tickets, and went back to the train, and got on board. Clearly the train was built for Koreans. More precisely: Korean children. Very short ones. When I went to sit down, my legs were longer than the hole between the two seats! Someone was supposed to sit across from me, and my legs didn’t even fit! Holy uncomfortable! Luckily, the people who got on with us had a baby, so I got to sit across from nothing, and BBro got to sit across from baby carriage.
It was the bumpiest train ride ever (and it’s not even actually a train, just a bunch of boxes on wheels made up to look like a train), as the inner part of Olympic Park is paved in cobblestones, but it gave us an opportunity to see the park, and more of the sculptures that are in it. More importantly, there’s a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf! For if you’re feeling drained from the train ride, which we were, of course.