Banpo Bridge light-and-water show

The months of May and June had a surprising number of Korean holidays: May 1 - Labor Day (bank holiday), May 5 - Children's Day (national holiday), May 8 - Parents' Day (observance), May 28 (lunar April 8) - Buddha's birthday (national holiday), & June 6 - Memorial Day (national holiday), which commemorates men and women who have died while in military service or in the independence movement.

This year Children's Day fell on a Saturday, so we didn't get a day off work, but Buddha's birthday was on a Monday and Memorial Day was on a Wednesday. We used May 28 to relax at home and do some cleaning and organizing that had been neglected a little too long, but we decided to make good use of June 6. Our initial plan was to make a picnic lunch, then go down to the Han River to rent some bikes and bike along the river, eating our picnic whenever we felt hungry. Well, our plans changed when we walked outside in the morning to a heat wave and had sweat running down our backs by the time we reached our nearby local grocery store to buy the ingredients for our picnic lunch. Instead of biking along the Han River, we made a nice lunch and ate it at home before braving the heat several hours later for a afternoon of exploring a new area of Seoul.

We had seen an entry in our guidebooks for a bridge, Bangpodaegyo (Rainbow Fountain Bridge), in Banpo Hangang (Han River) Park, which has a light-and-water-show every evening. We had made a note to go see it before leaving South Korea and decided this was the perfect opportunity, especially since we'd initially planned to be near the Han River anyway. We headed out and took the subway to Gangnam station, where we had to walk a long ways underground and through a bunch of construction to get to the right exit. Once we emerged into daylight again, we had to ask several Koreans how to get to Banpo Park before finding someone who knew and pointed us in the right direction. A pleasant half-hour walk later, we came to the park and continued strolling down the walking trails beside the Han River.

As afternoon faded into evening, we found a place on the concrete bleachers on the left side of the bridge, along with a number of Koreans, some setting up tripods and expensive cameras. 8 o'clock rolled around, and we wondered if we were somehow in the wrong part of the park, since the bridge looked the same as before. Suddenly water started gushing from the other side of the bridge and music played on loudspeakers. Everyone waiting on our side of the bridge jumped up and rushed across the road to the bleachers on the other side. We found a spot wedged between excited Koreans and settled in to watch the moving water fountains with different coloured lights projected onto the spray and set to classical music. It was a pretty sight and a relaxing way to end the day. After five songs, the fountains, lights and music stopped, and we stood up and wandered down the pathway in the opposite direction, looking for public washrooms. When we came back to the trail several minutes later, the fountains had started up again, and we watched from further away this time before finally walking back to the subway for the hour ride home. All in all, Memorial Day had been quite memorable for us!

An interesting building built on a man-made island in the Han River

Another interesting building

A floating stage

Han River cruises lighting up the water as they watch the light-and-water show

Bangpodaegyo - Rainbow Fountain Bridge

Light and water! See light go! See water go! Go light go! Go water go!*

Shadows

On our walk back to the subway, we went through some walking tunnels under the road and found these interesting spray-paint pictures. :)

*The first two sentences happened to be the text Jonathan put in as placeholder after he uploaded the pictures for this post - I thought it was hilarious, added the last two sentences, and decided it needed to be a caption somewhere in this post. Yes, we are nerds. :)