Photoblog: Cheonggyecheon

Seoul is a city that has been built almost completely within the last 50 years (seriously, Google some pictures of the place from before the Korean War), and as such, it's not a city with a whole lot of obvious places to take tourists. There's Gyeongbokgung and the rest of the Five Grand Palaces, and then there's Namsan Tower. There's also Namdaemun, but that was severely damaged by an arson a few years ago and is still under reconstruction.

I kind of like the fact that Seoul doesn't have a bunch of overpriced tourist traps with long queues that make sightseeing feel like a temper-raising day at Six Flags, but it's still nice to have a few city landmarks.

One of them is Cheonggyecheon, a very recent urban renewal project that cuts a swath of nature through the heart of Seoul. Several feet below the glass skyscrapers and wide traffic lanes is a wide, rushing stream with plenty of flora and even a little bit of fauna.

When you're down there, it's very easy to forget that you're in one of the biggest and most densely populated cities in the world.

Pictures were taken on my Fuji X10