8 November 2022
Emergency Palace
Namhansanseong Fortress
Today was not meant to be a hiking day, but kind of turned into one any way. Since I did not take my hiking back pack and I was never far from other people or a shop, I will not tag it as hiking. However if you do walk the entire wall of the fortress, which I did, you will get about 25,000 steps, and parts of it are very steep, I was sweating.
Namhansanseong Palace / Fortress is the emergency Palace of the Joseon Dynasty. Generally the king would be sent here when someone had rented out one of the main Palaces to film some kind of tv show with slow motion crying. The fact that it is surrounded by a wall makes it not only a Palace, but also a Fortress, and apparently both of those words are supposed to be capitalised.
The walk was nice enough, but be warned, much of the wall is off limits and instead you walk on a nice... road. I would estimate 50% of the walk around the wall is not actually along the wall, and the nicest looking bit is completely off limits.
The Palace itself is rather subdued, it has a small admission fee of about $2, but the wall walking experience itself is free.
Getting here and back is not too bad, you could walk up the hill... and if I was doing it again I probably would but it is a rest day. Alternatively, from the nearest subway station there is a bus that takes about 20 minutes up a winding mountain road. It is very popular with old ladies, so boarding the bus is violent, you have been warned.
When the bus arrives at Namhansanseong (say it fast twice) you will realise it is more of a tourist city than just a Unesco World Heritage site (which it also is).
It took me some time to find the wall, but the leaves were nice. More leaf views later.
A wall with a very smoky city below. Very smoky. Depending on the direction of the sun, terribly smoky. Remember when 2 days ago I was celebrating the lack of pollution?
Behold, the north gate.
You can walk along bits of the outside of the wall. Now if I was designing this wall, I would have it slant outwards, to make it harder for attackers to climb up.
More wall.
There are periodic structures to gawk at.
The ancient wall is mostly still under construction and covered in tarps.
Millions of brilliant white apartment buildings.
I imagine 2 weeks ago, these leaves would have looked great.
The South gate, I think.
I suspect this was or is a graveyard. The smoke hanging over it made for a decent photo.
This is perhaps the most enticing part of the wall. But it is completely off limits.
Instead, I get to walk along the road, and admire the colours.
Eventually I did find some long bits of wall which I pretty much had to myself.
This is the tree where they used to string up misbehaving concubines. The practice stopped in 1998.
I went to see a wall, so there are lots of photos of the wall.
This is an actual original bit of wall. Well I do not know if it is original, but apparently it is over 400 years old.
This even looks steep, but it was still steeper than it looks.
LAST WALL SHOT!
Now it is time to look at the Palace, here is the gate.
As I mentioned, it is a fairly plain sort of a Palace, only to be used in emergencies.
I walked to the very back corner of the Palace grounds to check the lawn was mowed correctly.
LAST PALACE SHOT!!
And of course, for the ride back down, I was sent to the back of the bus.