Seoul lantern festival '15 (서울빛초롱축제)

Good evening, world. 

Starting a blog post with something else than "hey guys" probably for the first time ever. So I'm one of those "New year new start" type of people and I already have one resolution for next year; Seeing and doing more stuff around Seoul. I want to visit events, exhibitions and festivals, take more pictures, visit famous places, find good restaurants et cetera. I've been studying really hard this whole year and haven't really had the time to explore and see that much, so that's something I really want to concentrate next year. I have only 3 weeks left before I leave to Finland for a 2 month winter vacation and a loot of plans with my friends, final exams coming next week and I've been writing speeches like a crazy person lately but I decided to start my project a bit early and made time to visit Seoul's annual Lantern festival. 

It's held in Gwanghwamun, along the Cheonggyecheon stream and runs from 06.11.2015 to 22.11.2015 this year. It's completely free for anyone so if you are in Seoul and haven't seen it yet you should ! They have lanterns designed by both regular citizens and famous artists and the themes vary from Korean historical palaces all the way to popular characters like Pororo. Cheonggyecheon is right in the heart of Seoul surrounded by high office buildings so it's absolutely beautiful. 

They had small paper lanterns you could buy, write small wishes / messages on them and then send off along the stream. Wanted to try that but the line was reaally long. They also sold other small lantern lamps and postcards and such and there was a lady doing airbrush tattoos. Not really related to the festival at all, but still a cute idea so we decided to try those out. Posted a picture of it on Instagram, you can check it out from the sidebar of this blog. 

In the end of the stream they had lanterns for the younger family members, like characters from children's movies and popular cartoons, and also some other random lantern designs. My absolute favorites were the cushion lanterns! Cushion foundations have been a huge makeup trend in Korea lately so it was amusing and very accurate at the same time. 

It was a great opportunity and I'm glad I made time to go see it. And Cheonggyecheong is gorgeous even without the lanterns and I haven't been there for a while so it was nice. 

Totally off topic, today is pepero day here in Korea ! Peperos are chocolate covered cookie sticks and the purpose of the day is similiar to Valentine's day; Giving peperos to your loved ones and friends. After a quick google search I found out the original purpose was to exchange peperos with each other in hopes of becoming taller and thinner...typical Korea hahah. Anyway have a good Pepero day everyone whether you do celebrate it or not !  

xx,
Julia