Stef and I had wanted to go to the Taean Tulip Festival – or more like I had wanted to go since there are tulip festivals back at home, and my dad really likes flowers so I wanted to take some pictures for him. Unfortunately, not everything went as we planned…

We first took the subway to Gangbyeon Station, so we could take the bus from the Dong Seoul Terminal.

Mistake #1: I didn’t look properly at the exit signs so it took us 15 minutes to find the bus terminal itself…

Mistake #2: We didn’t check the bus times. We arrived at Gangbyeon at around 11am or so and we were told the next bus to Taean would be at 1pm. Obviously, we didn’t want to waste time waiting for the bus so we started looking for other things to do.

Now this is the point: flexibility. I really feel like had this been a few years ago, or even a few months ago I would have been upset and hung up about not being able to go to the tulip festival to take pictures, since this was something I was pretty excited about (I even shaved my legs and wore a dress that day).

But instead we (or more like I) just accepted it and looked for somewhere else to go.

And I’m glad we did that, because we ended up going to Changgyeonggung Palace (창경궁). Though it was super windy that day we managed to take nice pictures, especially in the greenhouse that is located inside the palace grounds.

Plus the admission to enter was only 1000KRW! There are bushes full of colourful flowers there, and the best part: Changgyeonggung Palace isn’t as well known other historical sites that people like to take pictures at, like Kyungbokgung Palace, so there were a lot less people than I would have thought.

Definitely a good thing! There was also this traditional dance performance that we stayed and watched for a while.

It might seem like such a small thing but I know my own personality and I can definitely say that I’ve become more flexible and tolerant while here in Seoul. Changing for the better like this means I can explore more of Seoul and South Korea before it’s time to return home!