Alive Museum and Dynamic Maze at Insadong. Our day planning was to start breakfast at Ikseon dong cafes and then move to Alive Museum and Dynamic Maze, lunch at Bukchon Son-mandu Restaurant, followed by Children's museum and dinner Samyetang.Total time spent: 2 hours
Alive Museum is a place great for photo-taking and Dynamic Maze is an indoor maze - great for families or a group of friends to work out clues, decode puzzles, and take on a range of easy and difficult challenges in order to break free of the maze.
Here's some examples of the photos we took in Alive Museum. So there's one with Jade on an elephant. Jules James and Jade with the Pirate barrel where the boys posed to pull the swords out from the barrel. Far right, that's Jules going into Super Mario tunnel.
Above: All unicorns and pink, how can Jade not take a photo here! Even she herself, is full bodied pink!
Jade: Pink Angel
There is an area just on monochrome art. Quite cool, don't have to especially go to cafe to take photos like these above.
Above: Optical illusion artworks where the children are so big and hubs is so small!
Above: Entrance to Dynamic Maze!
Above: this light maze, the kids was trapped for awhile!!! We went round and round at least 3x before we got ourselves out!
Above: another group game for everyone to throw as many balls into the lit holes and once you hit the targetted number of balls, the door to the next course.
Above: the boys steering a ball into the maze on the digital screen. Once you solve the puzzle, the door (behind Jade) will open! And you get to climb up a wall with a rope!
Crawl through a mini tunnel. Yes, hubs and I also crawl through it! It was quite fun!
2pm: Onto the streets of Isadong to find lunch! If you are in Isadong, you should try this famous Bukchon Son Mandu which is a hole in a wall little shop, in one of the hidden alleys. They offer a variety of steamed and fried dumpling, korean noodles both served hot and cold. There were a few couples ahead of us even though it has past lunch time, but nonetheless we waited for our turn and managed to sit everyone in a row. Kimchi and ginger were free to take on your own. Water by the side endtrace of the store.
As the weather is still very cold, we ordered steamed mandus, one bowl of hot noodles and 2 bowls of cold buckwheat nonodles.
If you are walking along Insadong, then you will not miss this open air shopping and culture complex that has many cafes, galleries and workshops - Ssamziegil. It is similar but on a larger scale of Bangkok's The Commons. If you have the time, you can explore this place but we were running short of time as our last activity was to visit the Children's Museum before it closes early (530pm)!
4pm: Reached Children's Museum (War Memorial of Korea) and the grounds are so huge!!! There is an outdoor area that features all the retired planes, tanks and even a life size ship. The children's museum is indoor and although it is free, you will still need to make a booking at the counter for a ticketed entry. I suppose this is their way of crowd control.
The museum closes at 530pm, so make sure you plan your time well!
6pm: On the beautiful lit street of Myeongdong! Tonight for dinner we are going to Baekje Samyetang!
Above: Ordered abalone porridge for Jade. Back to Myeongdong streets and we tabao street food for the boys who wanted to stay in the hotel room to watch TV.
