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| From The Lotte World Ice Rink (롯데월드 아이스링크) |
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For this trip, we met up at the eastern entrance of the commercial district in Jamsil known as Lotte World (롯데월드). Inside this area is one of Asia's largest amusement parks along with a department store, food court and many other shops. At the bottom of all of this in the center is the ice rink that was our destination.
We ended up meeting at the underground entrance of Lotte World which is connected to the western edge of Jamsil Station (잠실역). At this entrance is a facsimile of the Trevi Fountain which was our meeting location. While waiting, we gathered up our 10 Won pieces ($0.0089 USD), the Korean equivalent of a penny, and took turns trying to throw them into the pot next to one of the statues in the fountain. For those of you familiar with Rome and its many sights, this statue with the pot isn't in the original Trevi Fountain.
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| From The Lotte World Ice Rink (롯데월드 아이스링크) |
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| From The Lotte World Ice Rink (롯데월드 아이스링크) |
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| From The Lotte World Ice Rink (롯데월드 아이스링크) |
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| From The Lotte World Ice Rink (롯데월드 아이스링크) |
After (almost) everybody arrived, we spent about 30 minutes wandering the maze like halls of the Lotte complex looking for a reasonably priced restaurant that could sit eight of us. Even though we saw at least 5 Lotteria (롯데리아) restaurants - east Asia's and Lotte's answer to McDonald's - we decided to go to a small Japanese restaurant instead. All of the late comers were able to meet us here at the end of our meal.
When lunch was over, we headed downstairs to the ice rink to buy our tickets and get our skate rentals. For this ice rink, the entrance fee and skate rental cost 13,000 Won. We found out that if you pay with a Shinhan Bank (신한은행) card, the price is only 10,300 Won. Luckily, a couple of our group members bank at Shinhan, so we were able to get the discount.
These types of discounts seemed to be offered at many major franchises throughout Korea. For instance, whenever you get the check at an Outback Steakhouse in Korea, the bill is also presented with a giant list of which specialty cards offer what discount and which ones offer points. It can become a bit annoying when settling the bill in a restaurant in Korea when the group ahead of you is going through an entire purse full of specialty cards trying to figure out which one will get them the best discount or the most points.
On the day that we went, we found that the rink is only opened for one hour intervals followed by a 30 minute break. At first, we thought that the Lotte World Ice Rink must have a great union, but then we figured out that the 30 minute breaks were for the Zamboni to resurface the ice rink.
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| From The Lotte World Ice Rink (롯데월드 아이스링크) |
For our hour on the ice, we had a most enjoyable time. After a few moments, we all got acclimated to ice skating and spent the rest of the time doing laps around the rink at a decent pace. We found out that inner part of the ice rink was safer since the more experience skaters skated there. The novice - and more crash prone - skaters tended to skate near the wall, which they were quite dependent on for support. All of us were quite awed by the middle aged Korean woman who nonchalantly and effortless weaved in and out of all of the skaters on speed skates.
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| From The Lotte World Ice Rink (롯데월드 아이스링크) |
One thing that was a bit of a culture shock to many of the ex-pats was seeing young Korean elementary school aged kids in the center of the rink practicing speed skating. Whereas speed skating isn't the most common sport that western children partake in, that wasn't the part that was odd. The surprising part is to see all of these young children in full body spandex suits wearing top of the line speed skates. While physical sports are great activities for any person of any age, the fact that these parents were spending so much money on their children's sporting equipment is baffling, especially when they will out grow it so quickly.
As our hour of skating wore on, our ankles and calves started to become sore. Along with that, the ice rink was slowly starting to turn into a lake. Only one of our members fell during the skating, but, unfortunately, due to the melted ice, the back of his pants were soaked with water.
We finished off the day with some ice cream at one of the many Lotteria restaurants visible from the ice rink. It was an enjoyable day for us and a good way to avoid the muggy weather. This will probably be a place that we will come back to in the future when the weather isn't agreeable with an outdoor activity.
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| From The Lotte World Ice Rink (롯데월드 아이스링크) |
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