Korea 2011: The Olympic Park: The Park itself

Having navigated the entrance, one then accesses the park.  Major features of the park are hectares of land, covered in sculptures from countries all around the world.  Amongst these sculptures are facilities for the people - picnic areas, restrooms, restaurants, vending machines, rubbish facilities, benches, trees, a huge lake.  And then of course, there are the buildings which were used for the games, some of which are now museums, but all of which are used.  I will cover some of the buildings in the next post.  We'll start with the lake:

The lake, with high rise apartment blocks in the background

The banks of the lake with a path in the background

A fountain in the lake

Next must come the sculptures.  I have taken photographs of so few.  There are thousands more:

This one comes from the UK - go British!

A couple - I forget where from

Foot or hand bones - body parts feature quite prominently

This one appealed to me for some reason

This one from Sweden.  A comment on post modernisation?

From Peru, if I recall correctly - maybe from a praying mantis?

And my favourite - thumbs up!

All the signs were in Korean and English.  There were just so, so many, that I can't recall the specifics.

The rest are more mundane, but serve to illustrate the nature of the Korean way of life.  Everything is available for everyone, mostly without cost, or at minimal cost.  As a consequences, Koreans support their local parks and tourist attractions.  Besides, they live densely in small apartments in massive high rises, so it's good to get out into wide open spaces, which they share politely with other people, showing consideration both for others and their environment at all times.  Let's start with some gym equipment:

Then a vending stand:

Korea is very hot in the summer.  There are stands vending coffee, Pocari Sweat, which is the equivalent of Energade, all sorts of iced teas, including corn, sodas, fruit ades in a myriad of flavours, tinned iced coffee.  In some places, I saw vending machines for books.

Ok, so we rode the park by bike, spent some time working out on the gym equipment, raised a sweat, and have quenched or thirst.  Next we'll recycle the can:

NOTHING in Korea is wasted.  The above bins cater for the various types of recyclable material, and then there is one for packaging with left over food stuff on it, which is presumably tossed as unusable.  

And one does not have to walk:

There were also bicycles for hire.  Please bear in mind that I have posted a small sample of the pictures taken.  Bicycles were kind of mundane with all the other interesting things all around me.