Our last destination last weekend was Suwon, a city I have visited a few months ago with my parents. A place where I thought I would never go back to. But ohh well.. I found myself back again for the second time.

Suwon is basically a good place to go for a day trip from Seoul because it is connected directly by Seoul Subway line 1 and it probably takes 1.5 hours or less to get there by subway. I would also recommend it for people who love historical sites.

Suwon Hwaseong Fortress

Suwon City Wall

We started by climbing up the hill next to the Suwon palace entrance until we saw the wall and started to walk along the wall. We didn’t get to walk through the whole wall though, but I think we covered at least half the wall in 2 hours while stopping to take many photos along the way. The path was pretty hilly so it was a good exercise.

Suwon Hwaseong Fortress is also a UNESCO World Heritage site. To get to the fortress, get off at Suwon Station (Seoul Subway Line 1) and take Bus 2, 7, 7-2, 8, or 13 and get off at Jongno 4-geori (intersection) bus stop. While you can walk around some parts freely, there are some parts where you will need to pay. Entrance fee will costs 1,000 KRW in total if you walk the whole wall.

You can also take the Hwaseong Haenggung Train around the perimeter of the wall, it will cost 1,500 KRW for a one way trip from the main parking lot. Buy a two way ticket (3,000 KRW) to make the whole round. The train looks really cool, just look at the above photo. TIP: The tour is given in Korean but if you bring your own earphones or headphones, you can listen to the explanation in English, Chinese or Japanese!

You can also opt to ride a hot air balloon (On the top right of the train photo) to see Suwon from an aerial view. Each ride would take about 20 minutes and the tickets are 18,000 won ($16) for adults and 15,000 won for children.

ANother thing you can do in Suwon Hwaseong is to try out Korean Traditional Archery. I don’t think it is that much different to the normal archery though. But it was rather fun. You get 10 arrows for 2,000 KRW. After playing, we all had to collect the 10 arrows we shot and give it back to them and unfortunately for us, it started raining when we had to do so. It was like hunger games, all 24 of us running across the field to get 10 arrows in the fastest possible way to stay as dry as possible HAHA. It was fun~

Gwanggyo Lake Park (광교호수공원)

If you like looking at night views, go to this lake park in the evening. I ran out of battery when I arrived at the park so here’s a really nice picture of how it looks like from Visit Suwon Hwaseong 2016 website:

You can come to the lake and take a nice stroll across the lighted bridge. It’s a very romantic date place too 😉

To get there, from Suwon Station, take the Bundang line to Cheongmyeong Station (청명역), get out at exit 3 and take bus 34-1 to Gwanggyeo Hoban Village Station 광교호반마을입구.

Other things to do in Suwon include shopping at Suwon Station area and eating Suwon fried chicken although I think that the fried chicken tastes the same as the one in Seoul!