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mitsueki Travels | 10D9N Korea Trip – Day 8 (Part 3): N Seoul Tower (N 서울타워) / Namsan Tower!

| by mitsueki

 10D9N Korea Trip: 23 April 2015 – 3 May 2015 (Updating!)

N Seoul Tower (N 서울타워) / Namsan Tower!

Our next destination is pretty obvious in the distance, hehe – N Seoul Tower (N 서울타워) / Namsan Tower!

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How to Get to N Seoul Tower (N 서울타워) / Namsan Tower!

My recommendation if you would like to do both N Seoul Tower/Namsan Tower plus Nandaemum Market on the same day – go to the N Seoul Tower FIRST before catching the shuttle bus 02 or 05 to Nandaemum Market (1 stop away, 1200 – 1300 won). It’s much better this way as it involves less walking.

Just to start off,  it’s quite a LONG walk from Namdaemun Market (our first destination) to N Seoul Tower (20 – 30 minutes walk) so the other alternative is to take the Namsan Sunhwan Shuttle Bus Number 3 or 5 departing from Namdaemun Market (1100 – 1200 won, S$1.50). As we preferred exploring on foot, we walked and slightly regretted because it was hot hot HOT! 😂😂

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How to Get to N Seoul Tower?

1.Shuttle Bus (1100 – 1200 won)

Hop onto the shuttle buses 02, 03 or 05 and enjoy a ride up all the way to N Seoul Tower without much hassle. They have many pick up points, you can refer to HERE for the full list of places where you can take the shuttle bus. Just that depending on your location, it might take a while before it reaches the tower so try to plan to avoid that!

2. The Full Namsan Tower Experience (Walking + Namsan Orumi + Namsan Cable Car)

Now if you prefer the full N Seoul Tower experience which involves plenty of walking, squeezing in with the countless number of people up the Namsan Orumi and then joining the endless queue to take the Namsan Cable Car in order to finally reach N Seoul Tower, you should read my full experience below, lol!

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If you read my previous post, you would have know that we took the train to Hoehyeon Station before walking to Namdaemun Market. To get to N Seoul Tower, we had to walk to Hoehyeon Intersection (can be reached from either Myeongdong & Hoehyeon Station) and then walk towards Namsan Tunnel #3 to take the Namsan Orumi elevator to take it up to the Namsan Cable Car.

Namsan Orumi

The Namsan Orumi is a nifty looking elevator that is able to bring you to and fro the base of the hill up towards Nansam Cable Car and vice versa as seen pictured below. Don’t worry it’s a free ride up, but you have to cram into the elevator! It’s quite a cool ride because the elevator is going up/down on these elevated tracks – it kinda reminded me of the Peak Tram ride in Hong Kong, except this is just a 3 minutes ride. The wait to get onto the elevator can be relatively long as only one elevator is in operation!

Here’s the view from inside the elevator!

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Heading out of the elevator, we were immediately faced by the crowd of people queuing up for the cable car ride! Not sure if this is a one off case but it was really really crowded that day! Since we already spent almost an hour getting to the cable car, we decided to just go ahead and join the queue for the cable car. And boy was it a LONG WAIT!! I think we waited for close to almost 2 hours+ before we were finally on board the cable car.

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N Seoul Tower Ticket Prices

Anyway, first up – the first queue is to get your hands on the tickets first.

For your reference, here are the prices of the tickets as below! Do note that the prices may fluctuate, prices were accurate as of 2016.

– Operating hours: 10:00-23:00
Individuals (round-trip ticket): Adults 8,500 won / Children & Seniors 5,500 won
Individuals (one-way ticket): Adults 6,000 won / Children & Seniors 3,500 won 

You either get the round trip cable car tickets for 8500 won (recommended) or the one way ticket for 6000 won. The latter is only good if you plan to head to Nandaemum Market, just hope onto the shuttle bus and it’s on the 2nd or 3rd stop. If not, I suggest you stick to the round trip lol.

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Here’s our tickets below, 17000 won for 2 round trip rides!

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Afterwhich, you will join the long snaking queue to enter the cable car. There’s a mini mart inside so you can purchase some snacks to munch away while you are waiting (like what I did) and head to the toilet if needed.

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We queued till oh my God, we finally we saw the cable car closeup HAHAHHA! It’s actually quite a big carriage(?) but for safety measures, each will not be fully packed with people – that’s why it’s quite a long wait. At least we are not packed like sardines!

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Namsan Tower / N Seoul Tower

Hello Namsam Tower! We finally arrived after such a long wait 😂😂

Seoul Tower opened to the public on October 15, 1980 and has since become a major tourist attraction. The 236.7 meter tower sits atop Namsan Mountain (243m). The observatory offers panoramic views of Seoul and the surrounding areas. 

Thirty years and countless visitors later, the structure was renamed ‘N Seoul Tower.’ The letter ‘N’ stands for the tower’s ‘new’ look, which resulted from a 15 billion won remodeling project in December 2005. With a new lighting system and changes to the tower’s overall color scheme, event coordinators can now decorate the tower for the season or events.

Just follow the crowd and signs upon reaching to get to the famous Namsan Tower love locks area and enjoy the view.

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If you want, you can ascend to the top of the Observatory but the view from the lock lock area sufficed for us! Oh and there’s an Alive Museum on Level 1 of the tower by the way if you’re interested.

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Namsan Love Locks & Namsan Tower View

As you climb the steps, you will spot the famous Namsan Love Locks all all around! Literally where there are grilles or even ROCKS with holes or basically anywhere where you can place a lock – you’ll definitely be able to see a Namsan a lock lock lol!

The Namsam love locks are seen as a symbol of everlasting love. You write your message, and then lock your love for each other before discarding the key so that it will never unlocked = last forever! The special thing here is that..locking your love is encouraged, unlike in Paris and New York (if you know what I mean)!

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Here are more photos of the Namsan Love Locks with the amazing view of Seoul below.. and the observatory at the back!

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Remember to enjoy the spectacular views!

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Placing your Love Locks!

You can easily bring your own lock or purchase it from the vendors there. I don’t recall the exact amount paid but we bought a small one!

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Teehee, and here’s our hot pink love lock! We were walking around looking for a less crowded place to place our lock and we found a perfect spot! Wahahaha not that many locks here as you can see and the deed was done!

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Please don’t throw the key down from the spot after that! Instead, there is a key deposit box that you can place your keys in – Assuming that they will be disposed of properly afterwhich.

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Namsan Tower Giant Macaron Ice Cream

Other than admiring the view, you can enjoy a variety of snacks as there are several snack stands here! Since it was a pretty hot day, I decided to get myself an ice cream of a different variety – a Giant Macaron Ice Cream!

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They only carried limited flavors including chocolate, green tea, strawberry, mango and strawberry but that sufficed for me!

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Each ice cream scoop sandwiched between 2 macaron shells costs about 4000 won (S$4.80) and they were an interesting and delicious way to cool off during the heat!

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Other snack stores there including the tornado chips and drinks! Was tempted by the tornado chips but we were heading down for another meal soon so I decided to skip it for now!

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Heading Down Namsan Tower

As mentioned, there are 2 ways to get down Namsan Tower. The first is to take the shuttle bus (not sure where is the pick up point though) while the second is to hop back on to the cable car where you originally came from. I had already bought return tickets so we just joined the queue back to the cable car. Fortunately, it was a right choice to leave earlier (before sunset) hence we managed to avoid the bulk of the crowd.

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Trust me, the queue here was MUCH shorter compared to the original queue heading up!

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It wasn’t too long before we were back on the cable car and could enjoy the views of Seoul from the cable car. As it wasn’t as crowded, I had the free space to move around the cable car and snap more photos!

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And then down the free Namsan Oreumi elevator back down!

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And that’s the end of our Namsan Tower trip! Stay tuned for the next post on Sunday!(:

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Till later,
♥ mitsueki

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Author: mitsueki

Hello! I'm mitsueki aka Daphne and I blog at mitsueki.sg! Follow me on IG for more updates too!

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