Wednesday, January 22, 2020

[Jan 2020] Day 02: Blue Square, Mapo-gu, Anyang Art Park

Today, Thursday, January 16th, is my first full day in Seoul, and I wanted to make the most of it by visiting all the crucial places for a Woollim stan!
I started the day early by visiting Blue Square, the venue for Golden Child's concert. Unfortunately no decorations were up yet.

Afterwards I visited none other than the Woollim Entertainment Building! Conveniently it is on the same subway line as Blue Square. When I first saw the building from the end of the block, I was blown away. It felt so surreal. The last time I was in Korea, it was just a few months shy of the opening of the Woollim Building. Though I never got a chance to go inside NIT, I'm so happy to have finally made it here anyways.
I first stopped outside NIT Coffee to take pictures of the beautiful display.
Next I took photos of the Woollim Building.
I felt so awkward having a photoshoot with my lightsticks but it had to be done!
And lastly I dropped off my fan letter in the mailbox. I had originally written this letter after my KCON18NY experience to give to Golden Child during KCON18LA, but failed to hand it off. I hope now they'll be able to read my letter^^
I had completely forgotten to look around for the new Woollim Building, and instead walked through the neighborhood to Infinite's old dorm. The dorm has since been torn down. At the time I took this photo, I thought it was the brick building...but looking back at my first experience here, the old dorm is actually two doors down from the restaurant, so the gray building on the right. The old dorm had a brick design similar to this brick building though.
Nearby is Infinite's favorite restaurant during their trainee days.
And around the corner is the back door of Infinite's old practice room, as seen on Sesame Player.

I had breakfast at Infinite's favorite restaurant, 행복한 마당. I've been craving their 김치찌개 ever since I first had it in 2014. And of course it's also Myungsoo's favorite^^
The ahjummas there were very sweet and asked me if I'm an Infinite fan. I asked if I could take pictures and they let me. I was surprised that there are now Ace memorabilia in here too along with Infinite...
Here's my order. I came shortly after they opened at 9AM and soon after a businessman also came for a meal. It's nice to see locals coming here too.

Afterwards I took the subway down to Anyang, south of Seoul. It was definitely an experience leaving Seoul because there's less English and there are multiple subways on the same line, so I wasn't sure how my trip would pan out. My main purpose for this excursion was to go to Golden Child's filming location for "Spring Again," Anyang Art Park (안양예술공원). Once I made it to the vicinity of the park, I was clearly really lost. A local approached me and I asked for directions. He was very kind and ended up giving me a guided tour of the entire park for 2 hours! We conversed almost entirely in Korean. I was really proud of myself, though halfway through I realized I shouldn't be so naive in case I was abducted. But in the end it all worked out.
Here is the tunnel that Golden Child ran around in.
And at the end of the tunnel is the wavy platform Golden Child sat on.
And here is the bridge that Golden Child crossed.

I'm unsure of the exact location of other scenes, such as the park benches they sat on. But overall I'd recommend exploring the entire park; parts of it are on the sidewalks while other parts are actually in the mountain. There are also stamp stations throughout the park.

The kind stranger offered to grab food afterwards, but honestly I was so tired. I took the hour trip back to Seoul and had black chicken ginseng soup at the famous Tosokchon. I had always wanted to order the black soup from here but the first two times went for the classic which I loved. The black version was masked with a lot of sesame flavor to my disappointment; next time I'll be going back to my classic.

For my first full day, I'm so happy to have visited so many places on my Inspirit / Goldenness tour and can't wait for what else is in store on this trip! 

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