Saturday Morning: Blue House

The Blue House (or in Korean 청와대 Cheongwadae) is the office and official residence of the Korean president. Yes, like the White House in America. If you make a reservation you can go on a tour of the Blue House (completely for free). Before the tour you have to check in at a small booth close to Gyeongbokgung Palace (eastern parking lot) and many guys in suits check your passport and reservation.

The meeting-point for the Blue House tour is of course also blue

Then you take a shuttlebus to the actual Blue House which is very close (maybe 5 minutes). After getting of the bus you walk through a big door in the wall and arrive at a small inner court. Before being allowed to go into a small conference building you have to pass a security checkpoint where your bags are not only x-rayed but also hand-searched individually. You also receive a badge which you have to wear at all times! Before starting the actual tour you sit down in a big room and a short introductory video with a welcome message from the president and his wife are shown. The video is well-made but at one point ridiculously funny. It's about a typical day at the Blue House...the lights in the buildings turn on early because the people start working early and look who is that [the president moves into the picture, on a bicycle] the voiceover says "Look, it's the president, going to work on his bicycle." This even becomes more funny when you go outside and are told that this big space over there is a helipad "where four helicopters can take-off and land at the same time"...so much about the bicycle ;)
After the video you can proceed to go outside and everyone receives a small present. The children get a notebook (with the Blue House logo on it) and the adults get two mugs (with the Blue House on them of course). A note about the participants: we were maybe a group of 30 people. Around half of them were kids under 8, some of them couldn't even walk yet. I can't imagine why the Blue House is such a popular destination for families, but it sure is! Maybe the parents want to show their children where they want them to be in a couple of years. Anyways, the children made the tour quite interesting. We had around 10 bodyguards and one (seriously extremely good-looking) army general who tried to make us walk in a straight line and follow all the instructions. (yeah, good luck trying to make a bunch of kids staying in a straight line on a path...they sure have a tough job these guys). Apart from the bodyguards walking with us there were also many "guys in black suits" standing literally behind every bush ;) Taking pictures is only allowed in very few places and I really advice you to not sneak any pictures!
The first place where we were allowed to stop and take pictures was in a big garden where, allegedly, the president takes a walk in the morning and evening.

The presidential garden

A bunch of kids, me and my roommate in front of the umbrella tree

Small stream in the garden

One really amazing thing about the Blue House is, that there is a flock of tame deer roaming the grounds freely. As I understood they just walk around and graze wherever they want and they are extremely tame. They came so close to us that we could have touched them and even when we moved they didn't run away. Unfortunately the general told us not to touch them, but here is a picture of them:

The tour is only in Korean by the way but you can borrow an English audio guide for free.
We very soon arrived at the actual blue house where the presidential office is located:

The blue house

And maybe you can see it on the picture: the reason why the Blue House is called Blue House is because of its blue roof.
The last building we stopped at is the building for foreign visitors. As you can see it has a more Western type of architecture:

The tour finishes in around one hour and is really worth it. Even though you can't take pictures of most of the things and can't go inside any of the buildings its a really interesting experience and I found it quite fascinating! I can only recommend going there!

Opposite of the Blue House grounds is a small museum which is very new and modern. Everything is hands-on and a lot of fun.

Inside the museum

They even have a robot but when we were there it was unfortunately charging.

Robot @ lunch

They have pictures of all Korean presidents and display messages which foreign dignitaries gave to Korea. I found a very recent one from Horst Köhler:

But you can also find a message from Barack Obama and many more.

The highlight of the museum is probably a small blue screen room where you can take a picture together with the current Korean president:

Having fun with the president :)

Oh and you can sit at his desk:

The new president?

Afterwards you can take a rest in the G20 summit room because having fun makes you tired: