Deokjin Park is famous for its bed of lotus flowers that cover half of the huge pond in the park. It is also the representative park of Jeonju. It is not a very touristy place and is mainly filled with locals enjoying the park and having picnics. We paid it a visit on a Saturday afternoon. There was a lovely atmosphere in the park with lots of children running around happily. Kids are always everywhere in Jeonju, I think it is because they need to escape their apartments and don’t have the luxury of their own gardens at home. We strolled around the park, taking pictures of the lotus flowers and walked across the suspension bridge in the middle of the pond. There are also some little wooden bridges where you can walk across the lotus section and enjoy the views from the pagodas. Unfortunately the light was not that great for taking photos, being all overcast and bright, so I think we will have to return to the park one morning in July when the lotuses are in full bloom and get some good shots. 

Opposite Deokjin Park, much to our delight, is a cat café (this may have been a contributing factor why we were so eager to go to the area). The café is not very obvious (on the third floor) and you probably wouldn’t notice it was there unless you knew about it. Luckily one of our teachers had checked on Naver because we couldn’t find anything on Google. We were both in need of some animal contact so the cat café was just what we needed. Now, these kinds of cafes are very popular in Korea. You get dog cafes, cat cafes, sheep cafes, hello kitty cafes just to mention a few. We plan to visit a lot of these (though they are mainly in Seoul). But the Jeonju cat café was a great place to start. We wondered in to the café where we swopped our shoes for slippers and sanitized our hands. Basically at these cafes you just order a drink and get to play with cats and watch them have fun. This was a well done café as the cats were in good condition, seemed very happy with life and were very friendly. It is a bit of a cat’s paradise with scratch posts, toys, heaters and overhead running tracks everywhere. I can’t wait to visit some other cafes and it will definitely be high up on my list when I go to Seoul. 

Our last stop of the day was Jeonju Zoo. We were on the bus and thought “why not?” I had never been to a zoo as I think they are depressing places but we decided to give it a try. The Jeonju Zoo was no different. The actual grounds of the zoo were beautiful and they were filled with families and again stacks of kids (it only costs 1300won to get in). But unfortunately, the animals all looked miserable, pacing in their small cement cages, and it broke our hearts. We felt so sorry for majestic animals like tigers, wolves, leopards etc in such tiny and unnatural cages. I guess that when the people here live in small, cement boxes, they may think it is fine for animals too.