A Day in Hongdae

This is going to be one of those "heavy on the pictures" blog posts. Michael and I celebrated Children's Day (May 5th in Korea) with a random trip to Hongdae. It's an area near Hongik University that has a pretty active arts and music scene, but today was all about pictures.

We headed straight to the Trick Eye and Ice Museum for some photo fun. Michael was adamant that we go to the ice portion first. It was pretty darn cold, and the slide was cool (ba dum bump).

I was chastised for forgetting his mittens...and he was soon not too keen on being in the ice museum. Ha ha!

But we had to take a pic with the penguins.

Next up was the Trick Eye Museum - this is another one of those fun places that just has a whole bunch of fun scenarios to take pictures - so here ya go!

The amazing shrinking Michael!

He's a natural.

And then there was this...lordy.

Bye, bye, Michael!

What the?!?

Again, he's a natural.

Hangin' with the pandas...

and the astronauts...

I love this picture for no other reason than the guy's expression next to us - ha ha ha!

He seemed to be in great peril in most of these shots...hmmm.

But then got to relax...

Before taking on a combat challenge.

After having plenty of fun with the trusty cell phone camera, we decided to explore a bit more and made our way to the Hello Kitty Cafe. I had a moment of deja vu on these stairs and realized it was because I had been here the year before when it was a Hawaiian restaurant!  Things change so quickly here!

The food was perfectly kitty-ized.

And we stumbled upon a 2nd floor bedroom setup...

Selfie in the mirror!

We headed out, after scoring some Hello Kitty swag at the gift shop, and made our way down the street.

We passed the Hongdae Playground - which is famous among the college set for its craft fair/market/street performances on the weekends. As such, it's not really a playground at all...as you can tell from the state of this poor slide Michael just HAD to go down.

But there were some interesting murals and street art in the area.

And with that last photo, our sightseeing and picture taking was done. We headed home for some promised time on a "real" playground and yogurt smoothies!  :)

If you'd like to visit the Hello Kitty Cafe, here is a picture of the map from the back of the business card.  There are two locations I know of - one in Hongdae (top card) and one in Myeongdong (bottom card).