I’m just gonna say ahead that I booked this tour too early but I didn’t have a choice since it was the only day available during our trip!
I think the best time to visit Hwadamsup is during the first week to maybe the second week of November. For reference, I booked this tour on the 25th of October. I think the place was still not as orange or as yellow as I expected.
This is how I was hoping it would look like : https://www.instagram.com/reel/C_c4fD0PkQX/?igsh=MTFob3J3c3E3N25sbQ==
Expectation vs reality really hit me with this tour 🤣. Nonetheless, I had a good time at Hwadamsup!! I had a good walk (or hike) since the weather was nice that day.
I read somewhere that you need to buy tickets to the garden BEFORE heading inside even if you are a foreigner so I reached out and sent them an email. This was their reply!
Tried to do research as to how you can arrive in Hwadamsup and you need to book a cab after riding the subway or bus.
Since I was taking my parents to the place, I thought that it might be a little bit difficult if we rode public transportation to head there so I decided to look for day tours!
There are a lot of packages being offered but I specifically chose the one that included the Botanical Garden – aka. the main gem of Hwadamsup!
I was able to find a tour from Klook, click me.
I made sure admission was part of the tour I was booking!
There were three choices for meet-up and we chose the one in Dongdaemun :
The head of the tour reached out to me on Viber a day before and asked me to join a Whatsapp group. I don’t have a Whatsapp but I went ahead and installed the app on my phone since that was where he will be making announcements.
He also asked us to bring all of our passports so that we could buy tickets!
On the day of the tour, my parents and I finished preparing earlier than our target time so we decided to head to the meeting place earlier which happened to be a good call! The tour guide only mentioned that the meet-up was to be 10 minutes earlier than the initial plan since the traffic that day was not good.
REGINE’S ADVICE: HAVE A HEAVY BREAKFAST IF YOU CAN! I didn’t have breakfast and the only time I was able to get a meal was after going around the whole garden.
The tour guide was more comfortable speaking in Mandarin but he can still explain things in English!
I slept during the whole ride to the place and woke up to this beautiful view!! I’m not giving up on visiting this place! I hope I can come back again to see more colors!
After a few minutes, our tour guide guided us inside and told us what time should we meet up. The garden was huge but we were given enough time to walk the whole place AND have our late lunch.
From here, I’ll be sharing photos of the garden and the restaurant (the seafood pajeon, fish cake soup, and gimbap was so good).
After we finished the whole place, the restaurant greeted us!
all photos were taken using an iPhone 13 Pro Max / Fujifilm X-T20 18-55 mm
Would I recommend this place? Heck yeah!!!!! I just hope you guys have better chances in autumn than me! I’m not giving up though as I’m determined to be able to visit this place again at it’s peak 🥰.
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💚, R
Read about my other Seoul adventures