Last week me and two of my friends headed to Nami Island (or 남이섬 종합휴양지) early on a sunday morning. It took us about 1 and half an hour to arrive to the Gapyeong Station from Heukseok station and from Gapyeong we took a taxi. Nami Island is a half-moon shaped island 63 kilometres away from Seoul, in the direction of Chuncheon. The island became popular amongst tourists after the release of Korean drama Winter Sonata, which has many of it's scenes filmed at the location. The admission fee to the island is 8,000 won for foreigners, middle and high school students, disabled persons and seniors. For others it is 10,000 won. However, if you want to arrive to the island via zip line instead of a ferry it costs 35,000 won. I really wanted to go by the zip line, but unfortunately the line was over an hour long, so we just decided to settle to the ferry. A friend of mine has taken the zip line before and she had liked it a lot. So if you happen to go to Nami Island, I'd recommend taking the zip line if you don't mind the price and have time to wait for your turn.
I've heard that most popular times to
visit Nami Island is during fall, when the autumn foliage is at it's
peak, or during the winter. At the time we visited some of the trees had
unfortunately already dropped their leaves. But it didn't really
disturb us that much because a lot of the trees still had their leaves and therefore we got to take a lot of selfies and group photos in front of beautifully colored trees.
The island is not that big so it doesn't take more than 4~5 hours to explore everything, making it a good day trip destination from Seoul.
