Prior to the trip, I’ve seen my friends’ pictures of them visiting this attraction called the Trick Eye Museum. Initially, I thought it was only available in Jeju Island, but after much research in the hostel at night on my iPad, I found one right in the district that we are in!
It looks REALLY small from outside. In fact, my friends both thought the exterior was just the exhibit. Ticket was about W13,000 which makes it about S$15, which seems pretty steep initially at the start.
And we thought it would just take us about perhaps, a maximum of one hour to tour the whole place? Hahah, we were totally wrong about that!
The paintings on the wall are done so realistically that it ‘literally’ pops out of the picture, even when looking at it with the naked eye. (I enjoy this so much more than 3D movies). The whole idea was to allow museum visitors to ‘be part of the picture’.
All in all, we spent the whole afternoon in the museum, snapping a whole lot of snapshots and really having lots of fun!
More information on the museum can be found here!
An awesome italian restaurant for lunch! They even included free ice fruit sorbet after the meal!
Ordered the safest (in my opinion) – Carbonara, which was really good! Menu was totally in Korean, with some italian words, which I can’t even make them out.
I have an obsession with red maple leaves.
Seodaemun Prison
The following morning…
Andrew decided to skip his visit to the World Cup stadium, and we trooped down to Seodaemun Prison for some historical tour.
The atmosphere was eerily calm, yet peaceful and serene.
The actual grounds of a historical prison. Kinda gave me the creeps, but I really love visiting historical attractions!
Ticket price is a mere W1,500! Worth it!
As we entered the main exhibit hall, there were so many Korean pre-schoolers running around.
Kinda jealous that they get to have such historical school trips as compared to us Singaporeans.
I remembered studying geography back in school and wishing I could visit those hot springs, plateau, mountains and waterfalls, but there are NONE of that in Singapore, cept for that pathetic running tap in the forest that was labelled as the only hot spring in Singapore?
Apparently they had more morbid model representations of torture methods but someone complained that it was too inappropriate to be seen by children, thus I saw none of it there. Not a fan of gore and torture, but I felt a slight bit of disappointment. ):
The box below is seriously way to sick.
A tiny box lined with sharp spikes? Yikes!
Thankfully the box was re-modeled and not the actual thing!
The sprawling prison grounds.
They also included a room with all the photo and memorials of those prisoners (I supposed, have passed on) from the prison. With the music playing on repeat in the background, and those sad, lifeless looks on each photograph, you can’t help but feel despair. ),:
The most memorable part of the visit for me was this poplar tree below called the Weeping Poplar.
It’s the actual tree that existed when the prison was still active and running, situated right outside the execution room.
As the prisoners due for execution were pushed to from their cell and to the execution grounds, they would always stop by the tree and weep bitterly – thus the name.
Visiting the actual cells, abandoned and clean.
A wall surrounds the area for the prisoners’ outdoor labor work. It’s built to a height where it’s impossible to escape, unless you have guts and a ladder.