Why go
The walk around Suwon’s fortress, Hwaseong Fortress, is fantastic (history, views, exercise, feeling on top of the world!).
There are a lot of galbi restaurants (food you grill yourself at your table) and the one we went to was really good and it was an enjoyable evening and meal.
The airport limousine (to Incheon – ICN) only takes about an hour (which looked nigh on impossible on the map), you get to go over the incredibly long Incheon Bridge over the sea and it’s a good place to end your stay. Though if, like us, you have a galbi feast on your last night, beware the garlic breath for the next 24 hours or so!
The toilets. Google them. There are so many quirky, crazy, mad public toilets! I would go again to go on a toilet crawl! Don’t underestimate the coolness of a public loo!
Is it worth going out of your way to visit
For the first two hours we were in Suwon (transport, language and accommodation stresses, made worse by having our cases with us, having been used to having a car up until then!) I did not enjoy myself at all. By the time we started the fortress walk, c5.7 km (which took us two hours with lots of stops), in sunny weather, I felt much happier, and increasingly so the further round we went.
As you walk around the fortress, you can see most of the rest of the walls and it looks an impossibly long way to walk. Then you realise you’re making good progress and by the time you return to your starting point, there is a wonderful sense of achievement, not that it’s a particularly strenuous walk (except one area of steps up … and up and up, then steps down … and down and down).
As for the galbi restaurants, there were loads around where we stayed, within the fortress walls, near the palace, on Haenggung-ro (the long bit of that road leading away from the palace with shops, cafes and restaurants on either side of the road).
I would go again to walk around the fortress walls and to have a good galbi meal. The city inside the walls is quite vibrant and friendly and there is a large covered market. But it is not a destination city other than for the fortress.
Hwaseong Fortress is a world heritage site and it is truly impressive. You can walk as much or as little of the fortress walls as you fancy, it’s easy to get off it or back onto it. You get a real sense of seeing a whole city. Suwon is, in my mind, massive.
Practical information
We couldn’t find anyone who could speak English in all the tourist information booths we tried. It was very stressful finding somewhere to stay. We ended up following a lady who worked in the bizarrely situated tourist information office within the palace entrance (they wanted to charge us the entrance fee to the palace just to get to the tourist information booth – but we had our case/rucksack and I think they eventually decided we probably wouldn’t do a runner into the palace grounds free). She silently escorted us to a “guest house”. As it happens, it was a hostel that was listed in our guide books and which we had’t wanted to stay in as the rooms are dorms, shared bathroom etc. But by then we were hot, bothered, tired and cheesed off having our luggage dragged around with us. On the plus side, it was only 15,000 won (£9.60) each. But neither of us had wanted to stay in a hostel. Fortunately, being off-season, we had a three-woman dorm to ourselves, complete with a bunk bed! It was also in a good location.
If you happen to stay at “Hwaseong Guest House Suwon”, turn right out the front door and just at the bottom of the street, on the corner with the main road (Jeongjo-ro), is a truly magnificent bakery. There are no English labels but it was a very successful pot luck shopping spree for breakfast, later lunch and plane snacks before we headed to the airport.
We struggled to find consistent information about getting to Incheon Airport. You can get local buses to Airport Limousine stops, but we opted for a taxi, to “Hotel Castle”, next to which is an Airport Limousine “depot”. There is a basic ticket office, it costs 12,000 won (£7.70) for a single between Suwon and ICN and takes 60 to 90 minutes (it took us an hour at about 10 am). NB when explaining to anyone you want “Hotel Castle”, you need to pronounce “Castle” not how I, from Kent, pronounce it, eg if you say “carsul” you won’t get anywhere, but if you ask for “cassle”, you’ll get to Hotel Castle and you could also say “Airport Limousine”. The buses seemed to go up to every 30 minutes (but that was just how it seemed at the time we were there).
Apparently, the only tourist information office in Suwon where English is spoken is the one by Suwon train station. We went to five others, all of which had “tourist information” written in English, which I’d hope would indicate a degree of English being spoken. No. Tense. Frustrating.
When we arrived in Suwon at the coach station (where it seems there is an airport limousine service, about which we could get no information), with our case/backpack and wanting to find and head straight for nice comfy beds for our last night (we ended up in bunk beds in a hostel!), we knew we wanted to stay around the palace (which, incidentally, is supposed to be a must-see. We, by the end of our two weeks in South Korea, were kind of over palaces and temples so didn’t go in, but we got a lovely view of it from the fortress wall). The coach station tourist information was a little challenging but we did manage to get a bus number and bus stop to catch a bus to the palace. We had written down the palace name and the bus driver indicated he would let us know when we arrived. It took 40 minutes and was a most ridiculously circular bus route imaginable. The coach station wasn’t even far from the fortress walls. That bus journey was very tiresome, especially when we realised after about 30 minutes that we about a block away from where we’d caught the bus at the coach station. Hence our bad mood for the first two hours in Suwon (we then couldn’t find anywhere to stay!).
I would recommend getting a taxi rather than a bus if you want to go from the coach station to the palace. Unless you have time and patience, which that day we didn’t.
