Seoul - Day 2

Our second day we were excited to get up early to head out to the National Museum of Korea. It was just a quick subway ride to the other side of the Han river, so we grabbed breakfast and headed out.

Here is Joseph checking out the map of the Museum, we still had not entered the museum yet, so we were excited to figure that we were on the right track.

The HUGE entrance to the National Museum of Korea.


The Museum was HUGE… no other word for it. It was also really beautiful with the big reflection pond frozen over out front. It literally looked like you could ice skate on the pond. It was fantastic.

We arrived to another wonderful surprise, the Museum was free due to the holiday and they were also providing special programs for kids… since Joseph and I are both kids at heart (and a novelty being white and all) we too got to try our hand at a few traditional Korean crafts. Check out our cool wood carving print we made with ink, paper and a chunk of wood.

This is a giant version of a kids game where you throw different shaped blocks. They also had jump rope, kites, a huge drum and some kind of see saw contraption. They also had a palm reading station which would have been fun, but it was all in Korean.

A Close up of the big dome, it is fantastic. You can see how bit is was because Joseph actually is in this picture!

The pictures don't do it justice, it is a fantastic piece of architecture.

It also had some stairs you can climb to see a great view of Seoul from the top, so of course we had to climb to the top to check it out!

So worth all those stairs! The view was amazing.

Me and the view of Seoul. I think it was the lower observation deck.

Our view of the traditional fair below, there were more tents I just could not get them all in the picture.

We were about to go in the museum when the Korean guy got on the loud speaker and people started gathering towards the big white paper taped to the ground, we decided to check it out only to witness a man try to make the biggest Korean calligraphy. He had a huge brush and got ink everywhere, but it was exciting.

The first floor really captivated us and was all about Korean history, and had lots of English for us to read about. We probably spent a good two hours just looking on the first of three floors
About halfway through the museum I figured out I could take pictures as long as the flash was off, so here are some of my blurry pictures. Sorry they are not the best.

Ancient Armour.

Royal crown and belt.

Pottery

Ancient coins

Recreation of a throne room.

We decided to take a break and head over to the Museum Café to have lunch. We recognized many of the western dishes, but sometimes the Korean word is more helpful than the translation. We saw something that said “boiled rice with various materials”…. And what would those materials be? Like car parts or something? Here have some boiled rice with three mushrooms, a muffler, an eraser, three double A batteries and a bag of Doritos!...needless to say, Joseph translated the hangul to show it was actually Bibimbap one of our favorite dishes. It is just rice with lots of cooked vegetables neatly arranged on the top… much better than mysterious “various materials”. We ended up getting it, and it was delicious!

We took much less time to cover the last two floors, since they consisted mostly of pottery, some art and calligraphy.

Room showcasing the different art forms of the Buddhists.

Me next to giant tapestries.

They even had a cool place you could make your own postcard. So hands on!

Fun with stamps!

The Buddha hall was awesome.

Big Buddha

Recreation of the Pagoda that I took a picture of in the park the first day.

After we took a 20 minute break off our feet, we decided to go back to downtown Seoul and see what the night life would be like.

Much to our surprise we saw they had set up a Huge event in the middle of town. There was a live concert, Ice skating, kite flying and booths to look at. We spent a good hour just walking around and watching poor skaters fall on their butts.

Emperor Sejong

Crazy Concert that was going on next to the rink.

Monument and Mountains.

They had awesome decorations too, it was so alive. We had a great time just walking around and listening to the music.

They even had some modern art TVdisplay that you could walk though. It was really neat, not sure I got it, but that is modern art for you.

We were starting to get hungry and were tired of walking so dinner and a movie to celebrate Valentines day seemed just the ticket. We stopped at a place called Sunshine Kebab and had really delicious Greekish food. (I use greekish to define Greek food that has previously been popularized in Australia.) We thought it was funny that our two main meals of this trip was Koreanized, American version of Australian food at Outback, and Koreanized, Australian version of Greek food….. nothing normal for us!

We then headed to one of five different theatres on the same block and bought our tickets for no other movie but “Valentines Day”.

It was cute, and we didn’t totally hate it, but it was no Love Actually…. I guess you need the British people for those extra laughs.

We decided to call it a day, and headed back to the hotel to plan our next day and get a good nights rest.

Seoul Day 1

Wow… where to begin…. It has taken me so long to get this post together I hope you enjoy it… and I still have two more days after this… sorry it is test week so hopefully days 2 and 3 will come about much quicker..

We had a fantastic time and I am so glad we went, it was a perfect valentines day gift/vacation that we really needed after so few breaks up until this point. But the trip almost did not happen.

We got help from our co-teacher Jenny to order bus tickets online, and unfortunately a week in advance there were many tickets left, but they were all for ridiculously early buses… Oh well, apparently to leave at 9 in the morning you have to go a month in advance… so we signed up for the latest bus available, 7am…. This feat of waking up early was very difficult for us since our schedule tends towards the later side, but if you got a four day vacation you want to spend in Seoul, that is when you get on the bus.

So the hateful alarm went off at 5:50am on Saturday, and with all our major bags packed the night before, we somehow managed to dress warmly ( because even our Island is freezing on these February mornings. ) and were out the door by 6:30 ( and it is only a 20 minute walk to the bus station)

Jenny told us to just go to the ticket window to pick up our tickets, unfortunately they wanted to verify the credit card ( which belonged to teacher Jenny) she had written her phone number on it in case we had an emergency or problem with the tickets, but she didn’t think we would have to use it… wrong on her part. The woman was very adamant that I provide her with a card that didn’t belong to me… Of course I would be suspicious of a big whitey trying to pass off at Park – Jung He too…. Haha… well we almost have the same last name. I was very concerned because she picked up the phone to call jenny… Now Jenny is very responsible, but I mean, who has their cell on at 6:55 in the morning, just in case your crazy white co-workers are in need….. it rang, and rang and rang, and I felt my heart sink because I was worried our trip to Seoul would be over before we even left the Island… Thankfully though, Koreans are never far from their phones, and apparently not too sleepy at 6:55 in the morning, and she answered and picked up the phone and confirmed she bought the tickets and that the card belonged to her, and before we knew it we had our bus tickets in hand and had 3 minutes to get on our bus.

I wanted to scream “thanks Jenny” though the tiny ticket window, but time was fleeting, and they already think we are crazy so it is best not to encourage that!

We found our bus immediately, and had no problems with our seats (10 and 11) and since we paid 6,000 won extra to be on the special bus we had nice warm roomy seats. I promptly fell asleep ( 7 is far too early for this gal) and Joseph watched out the window as the watery Island landscape changed drastically to a mountainous snowy wonderland. Yep, as we traveled farther north towards Seoul, it was snowing.

Two hours into the bus ride we stopped at a rest stop off the highway. They had bathrooms, a small convenience store, gas station and about 5 restaurants as well as truck vendors… it was a really great. I woke from my slumber on the great little neck pillow Joseph gave me for Christmas, and we went in for drinks and a bit of breakfast. We took a picture with the snow, but I forgot to get it off Joseph’s camera… so it may be lost… if I find it later I will post it. Back on the bus and two more hours later we were dropped off in the bus station with our luggage and no plan at all!

We scanned the nearby area and much to our joy, there were so many English places to be seen, so we headed to the KFC (since it was almost lunch time) and began to plan our day.

We decided the best option was to grab a hotel first and then drop our stuff and see what all we could see before it got too dark out.

Walking around behind the restaurant, we found a seemingly nice hotel called Hotel Herb…. Sounded fun enough so we went inside to do some pricing.

Love the sign!

The little man behind the counter told us it was only 60,000 a night (which is like 55) and it actually ended up being really nice and super quiet. Plus it had a computer in the room, which was really good as Joseph and I are developing a really bad Internet habit!

The room was really great, unless you wanted to open the window and watch television...then there was a slight problem...

With our stuff tucked away in the hotel we headed for the subway station ( which was right next to the bus terminal so we really didn’t have to travel too far) and we headed right to the heart of Downtown Seoul. The subway was not crowded at all, and was really cheap.

We exited the subway and stumbled across an amazingly empty and beautiful park.. It was so weird to be standing next to this ancient pagoda and see all these modern buildings surrounding you.

Me

Turtle that I was standing next too!

Really old Pagoda. It was fantastic to read about all the events that occurred around it, and it is still standing.

Joseph

People and bird tracks in the snow.

This cool building helped us navigate the city since it was one of like three buildings on the English tourist map that we could pronounce!

We ended up finding our way to Unhyeongung Palace… it is one of the smaller of the five palaces you can tour in Seoul, but we noticed a sign saying there were Solar New year festivities and that the normal admission fee had been reduced to free for the festivities. We hopped on that free bus as soon as it pulled up!

We toured the grounds and saw into the amazingly large palace. It was super cold and there was snow all over the ground so you had to watch your step, but we were able to successfully give ourselves the tour and had fun looking at the representations in each building. We also stuck around for the Traditional Music performance and were actually Interviewed by a Korean news crew for the military about our opinion of the traditional music. (We were pretty sure they only asked us because we were the only white people there) So somewhere I am sure military people are laughing at us stumbling over our words… Ummmm yeah I like the drums…


Joseph and a Guard

Inside the royal chamber

We found Kimchi pots!

The palace wall holding out all the modern buildings of Seoul. The old vs. new is so weird to be a part of.

Chamber Maid outfit.

Me with my pimped out ride!



They even had a table set with the items for the solar new year.

The Royal Wedding outfits on display... I think they are recreations.

Here is that traditional music and dance we got to see. I got a video, which I will post later. Blogspot is being weird right now.

Joseph and "the dancers"

Next we headed towards another palace named “ Changdeokgung” and were able to buy a ticket for the very last English tour of the day. This is the largest of the five palaces, and we even got to go see the “secret garden” portion of the palace. It was truly beautiful covered in snow. We want to go back in the spring and see it when it is warm and sunny.

The Entrance

Buildings with Snow, still the entrance....

Main hall, this place was HUGE.

I loved the interior... so mystical feeling. I want to live there... too bad people are not allowed in.

Joseph and the Great Hall

Me with the guidebook!

I felt so bad for this girl, because I was wearing sneakers and was slipping on ice in some parts of the palace.... we also had to climb about 60 stairs and a few muddy hills... her poor shoes took a beating. She must have been freezing too... it was about 31 degrees out.

The men's side interior.

When we finished our hike, we got to the secret garden... The pond was frozen over.

I am pretty sure it is no secret anymore, there was a food stand behind me and a bunch of shops. Still breathtaking.

Someone made a snow angel, so I had to take a picture.

We then walked around the city trying to find a place that was open so we could get dinner… Unfortunately because of the holiday many shops were closed, but thank goodness for Western chains that never sleep or take a holiday. We found an Outback Steakhouse and treated ourselves to a spectacular dinner.

STEAK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The service was excellent even if the food was a bit koreanized (aka more spicy) and for some reason the waitress brought us raspberry jam and chocolate sauce to go with our bread…. The same Brown bread they give you in American Outback’s… it was really odd but we pretended to be really happy and thankful… she seemed really pleased to bring it to us

Our chocolate, jam and pickles..... goes so well with steak.

Joseph Mid-bite.

Afterwards we hopped back on the subway and headed back to hotel Herb to plan for the next day which would be the National Museum of Korea….. next post!!!!!