Day 36 - Field Trip and Lotte World

(I'm posting this a day early because I will be in Busan this weekend. I normally make each post the day after the actual events happen but since I won't have a computer with me this weekend I figured I would go ahead and post this. Expect the next post in two or three days!)

The main atrium at the National Museum of Korea as seen from the top floor

Although I didn't have class today, I still had to wake up early because I had a mandatory field trip to the National Museum of Korea for my Premodern Korean History class. Although it wasn't too bad of a trip, it was my third time seeing the museum in less than two months, so it was a little bland the third time around. Luckily, it was only 3-hours long including travel time.

A fountain in Jamsil subway station

After I got back from the field trip, I headed back to the dorms and met one of my friends and we went out to eat lunch at a Mexican restaurant that was recommended to me as the best one nearby and the recommendation was true! The restaurant was called Latina Grill and the woman who ran it was from Mexico. I talked with her in Spanish and she gave us free nachos and free dessert! I got tacos for lunch and they were very good. It was a satisfying experience compared to the other restaurant we tried.

A picture of the inside of Lotte World. It doesn't quite do it justice.

After lunch I headed back to the dorm to meet up with a group of friends who were going to Lotte World, which is like the Disney World of Korea. Lotte is a mega-corporation that owns everything in South Korea (an exaggeration of course but they sell/own "candy, beverages, hotels, fast food, convenience stores, retail, financial services, heavy chemicals, electronics, publishing, IT, construction, and entertainment". They even own two baseball teams). I guess in America it would be like Walmart World or something, haha. I went with about 10 other people and it took us about an hour to get there on the subway. Lotte World is actually an indoor amusement park connected to the subway station so we didn't have to bear any of the awful heat!

A view in the other direction in Lotte World.

Admission into Lotte World was only 12,000 won with a discount that we had, which was very nice. There were a ton of rides and attractions crammed into a fairly tiny indoor space (tiny for a theme park, I mean) with an additional outside area.

 

(Left) Ice skating rink on the bottom floor of Lotte World. (Right) Indoor roller coaster.

The one problem that we ran into was that the lines for all of the rides were extremely long! We had to wait an hour and a half to get onto a roller coaster and once we finally got to the front we realized were in the wrong line! Luckily that ride was still fun but it was a little bit annoying.

Flying on a magic carpet in the hall of optical illusions!

Optical illusions at Lotte World!

I spent about 4 hours there and then I left the group separately because I wanted to get home early because I have to wake up early tomorrow to catch my train to Busan.

This castle looks slightly familiar...

That's all!