Seoul Lantern Festival

A few weeks ago, I met some friends to go see the Seoul Lantern Festival. There is a stream that runs through Seoul called the Cheonggyecheon (청계천) that is a little bit like the canal in Indianapolis. The Cheonggyecheon is actually one of my favorite spots in Seoul so far. It has these nice parks that run along each side of the stream. It is divided into sections by bridges, and each section seems to have its own feel. There are always lots of people around, but it feels little bit less like I'm in the middle of a huge city ;-)


For the lantern festival, there were all of these traditional lanterns that were floating on rafts in the stream. There were lanterns that represented the G-20 conference, and various countries from around the world, as well as traditional Korean culture. This will be another one of those posts with a lot of pictures ;-)

This was the main gate at the beginning of the stream. There are gates that look like this all over Korea!

Rio!

England! (Mom, did you know they have great shopping there?!?)

Italy!

New York City!

These are traditional Korean dancers, and they are pretty amazing to watch! I haven't been able to figure out what they are called yet, but once I do, I'll try to post a video of it for you to see!

Aww...

As you can see, most of the lanterns were pretty huge. The Statue of Liberty and Christ the Redeemer were easily 15 feet tall. It was a really nice evening, even if it was a little cold ;-) The lanterns were glowing and reflecting on the water, but that didn't show up in the pictures. The combination of pretty light and flowing water was a pretty amazing one!