Traveling to Harry Potter World

Intro. This is my project #3 speech in Toastmaster meeting last week. Because my audience might be not familiar at all with Harry Potter terms, I did not want to make them confused with too complicated words. I tried to explain it as simple as I could.

I want to inform you about an interactive reading experience. After hearing this speech reading this post, I hope you will be interested to try this website when it is opened to public. Pottermore.com. Have you heard about it? If you haven't, then you're definitely a Muggle :P

Well, you must have heard about Harry Potter, the legendary wizard story by JK Rowling. The first book, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, was released in 1997, and the last movie, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, was finished last year in 2011. From 1997 to 2011, 14 amazing years for me and for other Harry Potter fans in the world who grew up with Harry Potter. Just when everybody thought Harry Potter was over, JK Rowling suddenly announced a big news about a unique online Harry Potter experience. It's called Pottermore. It is a website, with the same story but different feeling. Here are the reasons why Pottermore is unique.

First, it contains a few crucial additions that have never been told before in any Harry Potter books. For example, in the first book there is a character named Professor Quirrell. We didn't know much about Professor Quirrell background from the book. But in Pottermore, we can find out how he likes learning dark magic in young ages, and so on and so forth. JK Rowling didn't only create a story but she created a complete world of Harry Potter including the backgrounds of each character. Also, in Pottermore we can know how JK Rowling got the idea of the name Quirrell, and other unique names. You know there are so many unique names in Harry Potter. See, this is not only fascinating for Harry Potter fans, but also for book authors and writers out there who want to learn writing skills from JK Rowling.

Gapyeong Tour

Many people may know Nami Island in South Korea, famous with the beautiful tree lanes and shooting place of Winter Sonata drama, but not so many people know about Petite France, which is near Nami Island. Petite France is located in Gapyeong-gun (gun = county), the eastern part of Gyeonggi-do (do = province), and Nami Island is 3.8 km away from Gapyeong, in the border between Gyeonggi-do and Gangwon-do (but it belongs to Gangwon-do). If you come all the way from Seoul (or basically from anywhere) to Nami Island, it is worth it to also visit Petite France in the same day. I call it as Gapyeong Tour. Gapyeong is beautiful with natural views like mountains, rivers and lakes. There are many villas and resorts over there as it is one of the favorite relaxing and vacation destinations in Korea.

View Gapyeong Tour in google map

Petite France

The way to go to Petite France by public transportation from Seoul is to take subway/train to Cheongpyeong Station in Gyeongchun Line. For example, if I go to Cheongpyeong Station from Seoul National University Station (near my home), it would take about 100 minutes by subway with 2 transfers. So the distance depends on which part of Seoul you are going from.

Map from SMRT website

From Cheongpyeong Station, take exit 2 to the bus stop to catch Gapyeong City Tour bus (there is Tourism Center in exit 1). This shuttle bus passes several stops including Petite France, Nami Island, and the nearest subway stations and bus terminals. You can hop on and off at every stop you want by using single ticket, which costs 5,000 KRW ($5) per person. Ticket can be purchased to the driver inside the bus. You need to keep the ticket and show it to the driver every time you hop on to the bus. It runs 5 times a day. Here is the timetable (click it to enlarge):

My route was on the red timetable: Cheongpyeong Station - Petite France - Nami Island - Gapyeong Station. If you want to travel the other way around, see the green timetable

Gapyeong City Tour Bus

During the bus journey from Cheongpyeong Station to Petite France, which took about 20 minutes, the TV inside the bus showed us Running Man episode #40 which was located in Petite France. It looked funny even though I didn't understand Korean, and it is indeed funny when I watched it after that at home with subtitle. Not only funny, it also shows us the beauty of Petite France. It's hard to split my attention between the funny show inside the bus and beautiful white lake along twisty road outside the bus.

So, what is exactly Petite France? Petite France is a theme park designed like a French village in the middle of Alps mountains. The buildings are in European style, narrow and high, with bright colors. It is located in the middle of nowhere on the hillside, and surrounded by mountains (in the winter covered by snow) so it really looks like a Mediterranean village in the Alps.