Seoul 2019 Day 13 – Strawberry farm, Ponchon Art Valley and Herb Island light festival

The last itinerary in Korea started late (planned that way). While K slept in till about 10am, grandma was up early preparing some food for K, fearing that he wasn’t eating enough food since most Korean food was spicy.

I got K up and dressed him, packed and got out of the apartment by 1130. We had to have lunch before the vehicle would arrive at 1pm to pick us up so we decided to check out the Chinese restaurant at the 4th floor outside Lotte Outlet.

Went in the restaurant and choose a mushroom soup, a seafood noodle and a plate of XO fried rice and granddad ordered some spicy noodles, all these for 54k. K had his lunch that grandma cooked. The food tasted ok and felt Chinese, a pretty rare place to find in Korea dominated by the Korean cuisine restaurants.

 

We were late for the 1pm appointment and I informed the driver, the same one we had on Tuesday, that I would whatsapp him when we were ready. Grandma had to return to the apartment first and by the time everyone was finally on ground floor and loading up, it was already 130pm.

The journey to Pocheon was 1.5hrs and our first stop was to a strawberry farm that the driver brought us. Wanted K to rest to avoid car sickness but he refused, and ended up puking a few times.

We arrived at the farm at around 3pm. The staff there gave us boxes to collect the strawberries and we were told that we get 15mins to pick and eat at the farm and were given instructions on where to throw leftovers from eating and how to pick strawberries. My nephew had to eat some lunch there as he was having a fever and not feeling well before and we started going to the farm to pick strawberries after 10mins. Grandma wasn’t interested in strawberries and stayed out with my sleeping niece while the rest went down the lane to pick. Taught K how to identify the red ones and how to pick them and he had a fun time filling his box while mine was not being filled as I only had two hands and couldn’t manage two boxes. I even spilled one box of the strawberries and had to wash them later.

The staff saw that one of my boxes was not filled and helped me go around to fill them up. I washed the strawberries and tried the jam spread before getting one jar (we skipped the jam making experience as it needed at least 5 people to participate and costed just the same amount of getting a jar of jam per person and we didn’t need that much jam) and leaving for the vehicle. The picking costed 17k per person and the jam was 5k.

30mins drive and we were at the 2nd location, the Pocheon art valley. Using the coupons (that was found in the Korea tourism brochure) that I brought from Singapore, that enabled us to get the tickets at much lower than shown at the ticket counter. The total costs were 25.8k while the kids get to go in free. For normal pricing, it was 5k for entrance and 4.5k for return trip on monorail and that would work out to 57k already.

We took the monorail up as it was a steep slope upwards and visited the beautiful granary first where some drama was shot there before. After we were satisfied, we headed uphill back to the Astronomical Science Center for a visit as K was most interested in astronomy and was eager to go. We missed the planetarium show timing and had to give it a miss but the rest of the exhibit took all the time that we had left even though there were only 3 small rooms. There were telescopes to looked into (though not at the sky) which was something interesting that not a lot of places would have.

We took the monorail down and left the art valley at 6pm, and drove 20mins to the Herb Island for the light festival. Upon arrival, I used the coupon too and this time, I couldn’t get the cheaper fee of 6k but 7k instead as the staff mentioned that there was a price hike (what?) and then 2 kids had to pay too so the total costs was 56k for 8 people.

The vehicle then drove us uphill and let us off at the bottom of the main restaurant. We were trying to find a place for dinner and as we walked around to find the store selling traditional Korean soup meal, we couldn’t communicate to ask what was inside the soup and wasn’t sure what was included, we left. I went around to look for the restaurants first while the rest huddled in an arcade area to rest. It was a huge area and I found the Chinese restaurant closed and the one at the top of the hill selling western. I even wandered into the Santa land by mistake before arriving back to inform them about what I saw as they huddled in the warm arcade games room.

We walked back to the main restaurant up the hill and was seated in a grand hall nicely decorated. Ordered a pork cutlet kids meal for K, a herb salad for myself, pork cutlet for grandma, pizza for granddad and a rosbap for my aunt, all for 54k.

After we were done with dinner, we went to roam around the island with whatever time that was left. Managed to see Santa land but missed the donkeys as it was late already. Saw some rabbits in an enclosure and walked past some dinosaurs. K had to go poo and after toilet visit, we only had time to just shoot whatever there was at the surrounding before going back to the vehicle. We found out that the entrance had a large beautiful area that we missed but it was already late and we were already on our way out.

The return journey was about 1.5hrs and K and I just slept throughout the journey. We woke up at the ground floor of our apartment and requested the driver to provide a vehicle for us to Incheon the next morning at 10am for 70k. The night was spent with play, packing, bathing, eating strawberries and calling mommy before sleeping. We were flying off for Hong Kong the next morning.