Day 3: Bucheon Azalea Festival

When we were looking for things to do in Seoul, we came across most of the things you’d expect: DMZ, food tours, palaces and historic sites. Since we visited in spring, we knew we wanted to make that a part of our trip.

While browsing different tours on Klook, we saw the very colorful Bucheon Azalea festival and signed up.

The actual tour we went on was more transportation and self-guided exploration – which was exactly what we were looking for. Getting to Bucheon and then to the cave (our second stop) would’ve involved a complicated system of busses and taken all day. It seemed a great chance to have someone else handle navigation.

We were picked up around 11:30, followed by another stop to load the rest of the guests. After an hour we were down in Bucheon and began exploring the mountain! I think the photos speak for themselves.

Azaleas were beautiful. Hike around the mountain was more exercise than we expected. It looked like they deforested the mountain alongside the stadium, then planted about 5,000 azaleas there.

Next to the azaleas there were a bunch of food trucks. I’ll take any chance I can to get ice cream. Many of the trucks were the same kind of food you see here in the US – pizza, BBQ, other cuisine from around the world. We found one that had Korean sausages dog and fried rice flour on a stick that’s an iconic Korean snack. I got the spicy version and it hit the spot. The only downside was the lack of any trash cans whatsoever, requiring us to hold onto the trash until later. 😅

I’d highly recommend the Bucheon Azalea Festival! It was colorful and beautiful. Pink in every direction you can see. Be prepared for some hiking up the mountain if you want to see everything. We were getting passed by old Korean ladies in their 70s, so it’s not too steep.

About 2 hours there was plenty of time to see the flowers, get some photos, relax and not be rushed. Afterwards we headed to the next location of our tour, the Gwangmyeong Cave.