It was all very quick and easy – find the counter and they have your name on their list and you’re given your vouchers and then get bundled on the bus with a few others and taken to the hotel.
The accommodation is pretty standard. It’s the Best Western Premier Songdo Park Hotel this time (it varies, apparently). It’s situated right across from Central Park, which doesn’t look like much during the day… it was dusk by the time I got to the hotel, so I quickly looked for somewhere to take some photos from. The only place with a clean window was the gym on the 20th floor, so I took a few from there and the ‘urban garden’ on level 3:
And yes, those buildings do look crooked. It’s the city of the future! Only it looked like a bit of a ghost town.
Dinner was being served from 7pm to 8pm, so I thought I’d better go and eat. Dinner was a bit of a let-down after the excellent food we’d had on the flight (I know!) – it was a choice of a pasta with tomato sauce, or tuna sandwich. I chose the tuna sandwich since I thought I’d try to be a little bit good – to a certain degree, since I ate the accompanying chips!
I had excellent company at dinner – a guy who’s going to Germany for a few art conventions – Berlinale, something else in Kassel and somewhere else. We had a great conversation about travelling and East and West Berlin and Germany etc. But the lights were coming on in Incheon and the temptation to go and photograph was too great.
I was going to go back up to the 20th floor but was tempted outside first and ended up walking through the park to get some shots of the lit up hotel and other high rises in the area. It was getting quite dark but I felt absolutely safe as I walked around and stopped for photos. There were lots of people walking in the park, too – many young families and old couples with their dogs, as well as people exercising. It was very nice:
As I was heading back to the hotel, the fog started rolling in obscuring the buildings from the bottom first. It looked rather sci-fi! So naturally, I had to take some photos of that too:
It was getting quite cool by now being after 10pm, so I headed back to the hotel. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get photos of the lights from the 20th floor, because all that could be seen was fog! So, time for bed.
