Today is children day in Korea, to promote children rights and their value to society. And for all of you who are amazed that it all goes smooth during our holiday as a young family, that’s not true of course. We just don’t focus on all the spills, cries and scenes that are also part of our life.
To celebrate childrens day, during breakfast, Zeno spilled his juice all over himself, Olga’s coffee all over the table and her, threw his jelly sandwhich on the floor and egg on Olga’s trousers. Happy childrens day to Zeno…. We took it as a sign that breakfast is not for us today and we packed our bags and left Daejeon.
It’s raining again today, but it’s actually nice and refreshing after yesterdays heath. Well Olga thinks so, Tim not so much as he has to drive on crowded highways with minimal sight the whole day.
We are on our way back to Seoul, as we leave Korea in two days. First, we visit the Independence Hall of Korea It’s a huge complex and we’re soaked by only walking from the parking to the entrance.
The complex consists of six separate exhibition halls, all with their own theme. It starts with the paleolithic area, and goes via Gojoseon (2333 BC) via the 3 kingdoms (57 BC), to the Baekje and Silla Kingdoms (668), the Goryeo (918) and Joseon (1392) dynasties, to the Korean empire (1897), Japanese annexation (1910) and the surrender of Japan (1945) and independence of the Republic of Korea (1948).
It’s an okay summary of everything we learned and saw in the past weeks, but it does not add much new, nor does it show real artifacts. The part on the resistance to the Japanese is very elaborated and forgets about the Allies and let the war magically end in August 1945. Not a word about Atom bombs. Another strange thing is that the story ends in 1948, omitting the whole Korean War. We have only found some information on the war on three different occasions while we were told hundreds of times about the Japanese invasion in 1596. Guess they like a happier story here.
Next on our list is the Ratio Gallery in Cheonan, but the children fall asleep in the car, so Olga is on duty at the parking and Tim visits the gallery on his own. It’s not that interesting so Olga doesn’t go in afterwards.
The children still sleep when Tim is returns, so we set course to the next museum on our list, but our hunger (it’s 13:30) is too great so we stop at the highway restaurant for lunch. It’s very crowded and something goes wrong with our order, as we get less and different food then we thought we ordered. After waiting, hoping more will come, we take our loss and order again. We eat, but it’s too crowded to really enjoy it.
The last museum is the Ho-am museum, a private museum built by Samsung. It has a great exhibition on Buddhistic art and women with great and unique pieces from all over the world. It’s a short drive to Suwon our last stop in Korea before we go to Taiwan.
We let Cleo choose a restaurant, as it’s childrens day in the end, and she decides it’s time to eat a burger once more. She almost eats the whole burger so at least we made the right choice for her.
The rain is not letting down, but Tim still wants to get a picture of the city gate in the dark with some nice lights. So he goes for an hour’s walk through the rain, gets his picture and is soaked to the bone when he returns to a pandemonium of children’s cries as they are having fun in their own big bed once again. After a short separation they get the message and finally fall asleep at 21, and we have 30 minutes for ourselves before our time is up too… Happy childrens day;-)
Paldalmun gate
Leave a Reply