Tuesday Tourism: Part 1 - The Morning

Another early start on Tuesday. This was our scheduled tourism day planned out by my fiancee. It was jam packed and this will take several posts to go through. First stop was Seoul Tower. I saw it in October, but this was a chance for the others, though Adam did not join us up in the tower, saying it was, "fucking retarded." I think he was just tired from the previous night. This by the way probably marks the first point of the trip where one of us got tired and cranky. Most of us were guilty of this at some point (though Daniel seems the exception). I'm glad I went up though, because I completely forgot that the washrooms there had a big glass wall so that you could look out over the city while you did your business. Hilarious!

The new favourite drink of the trip, Pocari Sweat

The site also has a "Teddy Bear Museum", which is really just a small store of Teddy Bears, but the amusing part was the large bear we saw being shipped in. We had to snap a photo.

Also, there is one fence along the observation deck where couples like to place locks on and the throw away the key to make it permanent. We missed that last time, so my fiancee and I decided to do this. Adam, Daniel, and Branko passed the time with a photoshoot on a nearby bench.

The actual practice is frowned upon by officials

The that hardly seems to stop it.

We ran off to Namdaemun Market to continue Daniel's hunt for Konglish shirts. My fiancee was also looking for cute dog clothing, and Branko was both on a hunt for shirts and a fake Louis Vuitton purse his sister requested. Branko unfortuantely found that no Korean shirt could contain him (he's like a 3XL in Korea)! I ended up grabbing a new pair of glasses as they are just so dirt cheap in Korea as compared to Canada. Like, 1/4 the price cheap! I just got a pair six months back, but figured I could use a backup. Besides, with two pairs, I was comfortable going fairly geeky on the second!

Street food! Also, these Blues Brothers statues are everywhere.

Branko sad that nothing fit him

My new glasses!

Next, we hopped on the bus and took a trip to Changdeokgung, one of the two large palaces in Seoul (here's my visit from October). We walked along with one of the Korean tours (the English one was an hours wait away), and saw the sites. The tour took a slightly different route than the last one I did, so I got to see a few different parts. We didn't really mind the tour being in Korean, as they were super interested in all of the history and there were signs and plaques anyway. At one point Daniel started getting yelled at a little by some older Korean man. We're not sure what it was about exactly, but it seemed to be related to his unshavedness. Not sure if the guy was impressed/amused or scandalized.

The main gate and the grounds

The throne room (outside and in)

A cutie (not the one with the camera, Adam)

Did somebody call the awesome squad?

Daniel causing a stir.

Regardless, it was getting really hot, so we bought some water at the snack bar along the tour and then went off to lunch.

We went to Mulan - Casual Chinese Restaurant, a restaurant we went to on my last trip, and got Jajangmyun (long noodles with black bean sauce). It was tasty and a lot of food. Branko was the only one to completely finish I believe.

Tasty!

Korean Adventure: Sunday

On Sunday we woke up pretty early, but did some laundry and stuff before we left. The first stop was Changdeokgung which was a secondary palace to Gyeongbokgung, built afterward and destroyed at the same time. It was however rebuilt first, and became the primary palace. The last members of the royal family lived here until passing away in 1989. It's more complete than Gyeongbokgung, and also has a much more forested and secluded garden out back. It was very nice. It was much more crowded than the palace on Saturday, and our English tour had a large number of people. My fiancee says that Korean people love going to there own tourist attractions. More so than other places. I believe it when seeing the huge numbers of people at all the places we went this weekend. We even ran into one of her co-worker with his family (7 people in one car).

The Main Gate


The Throne Room



Samples of the grounds and buildings



These four are buildings in the secret garden behind the main palace


Our tour guide and a map of the palace and secret garden

We then hiked up Namsan (the mountain and national park in the middle of Seoul) and went up the Seoul Tower. You can really appreciate how huge the city is by a) viewing it from this tower. b) realizing that there's a freak'n mountain inside the city. I must say, the view was very good, even with the slight haze that the overcast day provided.

Heading home we saw a 4 car collision. Well, 2 cars and 2 buses; clear evidence of the craziness that is Seoul driving. Actually, their vehical accident rate is apparently not bad, and testament to their reactions. The vehicle/pedestrian rate is quite high though, a testament to their recklessness concerning red lights and crossings. The one bus plowed through the sidewalk rail. I'm glad we were not standing there. We boarded another bus that was heading through downtown and got a nice adhoc tour of the city at night. The back of the bus however smelled very much of vomit.

For supper, we went to a very good BBQ place for some awesome Kalbi. CSI again on TV when we get home. Good day.