Daegu City Tour

When Maria, Matthew, Gianni, and I were visiting the Daegu Stamp Trail locations at Palgongsan, we realized that it might have been easier (and cheaper!) to visit those places on a Daegu City Tour instead. We sent Lily on a few City Tours while she was visiting simply because it was easier for her to get on a bus and see a few places than it would have been for her to try to navigate the city by bus. Daegu City Tours offers a few regular courses to various places around the city, but only two of the four courses are offered on the weekend. One was the Palgongsan course, and we've seen all of the places it stops at, but the other went to some places we've really been meaning to visit. Although I made the reservations by phone easily enough for Lily, the staff at the tour office only speak broken English, so I decided to ask my manager at the Touch Daegu blog to make reservations for all of us. She was really great to help out and get us all the info we needed.

We took the Science and Environment Tour Course yesterday, and it was pretty fantastic. The locations were all really beautiful, but most are difficult to get to (especially the science museum), so it was nice to be able to sit on a bus with air conditioning and go there directly. The weather super hot and quite humid. The course took us to the Daegu Science Museum, the Daegu Arboretum, and the ARC (Architecture/Artistry of River Culture). All three locations were in my Korean Stamp Book, so it was nice to get a few of those ticked off my list, too.

Science Museum

The Science Museum was about 40 minutes from downtown on the bus. It's near Mt. Biseul, where we went for the ice festival, and none of us wanted to have a repeat of our bus experience from the first time we went there, so the city tour was perfect. Our guide spoke pretty good English, but all she really had to tell us was when to get back on the bus. The Science Museum was surrounded by mountains. It's a new museum (only opened last fall), so the building was really modern. The exhibits all had a lot of English, so that was helpful, but most of the exhibits were geared more towards children and teens. There are three wings of the museum: 

Global Warming Exhibit

one for very young children, one about climate change, and one about technology. You have to use a barcode on your entrance bracelet in order to scan yourself in to each wing. We stopped at the global warming wing first. Most of the information was geared towards children, as I said, because we already knew most of it. But there was a part with various sea animals that are found in Korea, so it was neat to see some of the fish and turtles. In this wing, we also watched a 4D animated movie about the life of a turtle. It was really fun, and all the kids in the theater with us kept saying, "fun! fun!" in Korean. They were super adorable. The seats moved and everything. The main characters were a regular, male turtle and then a pink, girl turtle. It was partly about what sea turtles experience and partly just an under sea exploration, showing various animals. Still, it was pretty cute. We tried to see a show at the planetarium. Unfortunately, we found out they only have shows in Korean, and they are 40 minutes

Technology Exhibit

 long. The woman at the museum informed us that they will, eventually, have English shows at the planetarium, or at least English subtitles, but that wasn't ready yet. Oh well! We then went into the technology win. The staff member in the wing spoke a bit of English, so he followed us around explaining different parts of the exhibit. First, we watched a bowling ball go around an "energy flow" machine. The ball went on a track, and was apparently powered by various sustainable energies. There was a section about how the city prevents major electrical black outs, like one that happened in 2011 apparently. My favorite part was a platform where you could build your own wooden structure and see how it would stand up in an earth quake. The platform you stand on also shakes and different speeds, so you can feel what it's like also. For some reason, there was a car arcade game where you had to drive your car and follow a GPS to a destination. I enjoyed seeing their predictions about the cell phones of the future, too. I really hope they are correct because some of those phones were awesome! There was a section about textiles and how textiles have developed over the years. Daegu is a big textile manufacturer, so I'm sure that's why it was included. Maria and I enjoyed a room in the wing where you could build things with colored, plastic pieces. I made a ball, and she made an ice cream cone-shaped thing, but there were kids in there make robots and all sorts of big things! After we finished checking out the wings, we headed to the cafeteria to get some food. One fantastic thing about Korea: the prices of most attractions, and the prices of the food at those attractions, is not overly inflated like it is at home, and the quality of the food is well above what you can get at similar places at home, too. The food was only about $10 for two of us, and the entry to the museum is $3 a person. We ate don cass (fried pork cutlet) before getting back on the bus to head to the next location.

Our second stop was the Daegu Arboretum. We were only given 40 minutes to walk around for some reason, so we could have done with more time there for sure. It was really hot though, so I'm kind of glad that today it was a short visit. We can get back there pretty easily, so maybe we'll go in the fall when it cools down a bit. The arboretum was beautiful. It was basically an outdoor park with all kinds of plants to see. There was a greenhouse full of bonsai trees and another full of cacti. There are walking trails along the outside of the park with all kinds of plants to see also. Matthew things the walking paths lead to hiking trails in the nearby mountains. It was hot, so we all decided to cool off with some ice cream bars at the store that was there. It wasn't very busy, but there were lots of Korean kids playing in sprinklers in the open park area at the center of the arboretum.

Our last stop of the day was the ARC. The ARC is kind of a landmark in Daegu now, but it only opened in 2012, so it's new. It looks like an art installation because it's a massive, shiny, metal arc outside by the river that runs through Daegu. Inside, they have a few art installations--one about accepting cultural diversity that was tons of small, blue men bowing, and another of Korean photography. The inside of the museum also has a history of the Nakdong River in Daegu and how waterways are important to any city, especially Daegu. It was really interesting to see the pictures of how the landscape of Daegu, even just around the river, has changed over the years. We walked up to the top floor of the ARC to look out over the city, and the view from up there was really pretty. The area around the ARC has very little shade, and it seemed like people had brought their tents to camp out outside the museum where there is a fountain the kids can play in. There are so few places for relief from the heat, which is strange since Daegu is the hottest city in Korea. No outdoor pools, no natural bodies of water that you're allowed in, no water parks--nothing!

The heat made the trip a little less fun, but the tour itself was excellent. I'm glad I got some stamps and that I got to see these places. I would go back to all three of them again. The City Tour definitely made it easier to get to these out-of-the-way places. If anyone comes to visit, I definitely recommend sending them on a tour, especially if you are working during the day, and they have to go alone. It was a great day.

Last night, after the tour, we went to see Malificent, which none of us thought was that great. I think Angelina Jolie was amazing though, and I didn't hate the story, but there were some holes, and the entire thing was CG. After, we got dinner at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant where they make san geop sal kimbap. Kimbap is sort of like Korean sushi, and san geop sal is a kind of really nice pork that you can get at most barbecue restaurants. It was the most delicious kimbap I have ever had! Maria has had a hankering for board games, so we went and played some at the cafe for a few hours after dinner. She won both of them. We played Carcassonne and Ticket to Ride, both are really great games that we've only played since being in Korea. Definitely check them out when you get a chance. It was a great day! Tomorrow, we're seeing Matthew and Maria again when they come over for movies and more board games. It's a Maria and Matthew filled weekend! :)