Suwon Fortress

This weekend my sister, Lisa, and I went to Suwon to visit the Fortress. When we got to the station all the morning trains to Suwon where booked, and there were only standing seats available. I found this odd because it was still early. When we arrived at Suwon we found the Tourist Information Center.  We were informed that we were lucky since today there was going to be a festival.

We took bus 13 to the Fortress. When we arrived, people where already getting set up for the festival. Lisa and Gabriela headed towards the coffee booth that was offering free coffee. The workers asked if we could take a picture with them in front of the banner. We happily agreed.

As we headed to the fortress, there was a huge area set up for just food venders. We all couldn’t wait to have lunch after our hike. We also noticed that everyone was so much friendlier and happier than in Pyeongtaek. I am not sure if this was because of the festival or if people in Suwon are generally happier people.

We made it to the top of the fortress and walked around for a while. The walk up was pretty steep and I am definitely felt out of shape, but once we made it to the top the rest was pretty flat.

The view from the top

Fortress

On the way down, we stopped at the gold Buddha.

For lunch my sister decided to get Chinese food since they were making the noodles fresh.  Lisa and I were lured by the aroma of BBQ beef. We were unsure how to order but the cashier spoke English and advised us that the cheap meat was American and the expensive meat was Korean. Not sure of the price difference, which was $10 but we went with the good ol’ American beef.  We got so much meat with our two orders; we could have easily shared one. We were so stuffed! After our waitress cooked our meat on the grill on the table she was asking us something about the bones. We had noticed other people had their bones grilled, so we thought maybe she was asking us if we wanted her to cook it as well. We said yes and she took the bones and stuck them in a bag and gave it to us to take home. We were all so surprised.

This is what Gabriela ate

After lunch we decided to head back home. We quickly noticed that the streets had closed due to the parade. We decided to talk towards the next bus stop, but the closures continued for several streets over. By the time we finally made on to a street that had moving cars, we tried to hail a taxi, but every taxi was full! We tried going different ways and still no luck. We had to back track and headed towards the station. We had been walking for what seemed hours and desperately wanted to go home. Walking on all the closed streets we never saw a parade and I was irritated since it made no sense for the streets to be closed. Eventually a nice lady in a taxi stopped next to us, and asked if we were headed to the station. We said yes and jumped in a little too quick. We were all relieved once we were in the taxi.  

When we got to the station all the trains were once again full to go back home. I no longer felt lucky for coming on a festival day.