Stephanie's Travels: Trick Eye and Ice Museums

Last weekend, my aunt Gail came to visit me. She was here for two and a half days, staying in Asia a bit longer at the end of a tour of Tokyo, Beijing and Seoul. It was absolutely wonderful to see her, and it was a great excuse to go visit the Trick Eye Museum in Hongdae.

The Trick Eye Museum was pretty awesome, to be honest. It's a gallery, in a basement, where famous paintings have been altered and visitors can go inside. The paintings and lighting are specifically engineered to allow visitors to take awesome pictures, and they have staff members wandering around offering to take pictures for you in every room. My aunt and I weren't the most creative in how we interacted with the paintings, and part of the fun was watching other people being a little strange and goofy.

If you want to go visit it yourself (which I highly recommend), there are vouchers for 12,000 won admission here. Regular admission, which allows you to visit both the Trick Eye Museum and the Ice Museum, is 15,000 won.

To get there:

Get off the subway to Hongik University, exit 9. Take a left at the first major intersection (at the time of writing this, there was a TGI Friday's on the left of that corner). Walk up the street, and take a right at the second street. The streets here look more like alleys, very narrow. The Trick Eye Museum will be on your right hand side. It is announced with a pink sign, and is located in the basement level of the building. For more information, look at Visit Seoul's link, which has an interactive map that was super helpful when I got lost. Twice. Below is a non-interactive, but still helpful, map.

And below are a bunch of pictures of us being silly and goofy!

I would most certainly die if this situation were real life.

Entrance to the Trick Eye Museum also included entrance to the Ice Museum, also located in the basement of the same building. When you walk in, there are attendants who hand you a blanket because it is, of course, absolutely freezing inside! It was fun to walk through. There were penguins and igloos, people trapped in ice, a whole house made of ice (completely with a dirty toilet), a Christmas scene, and an ICE SLIDE! Check out even more pictures!