July 11, Seoul

Today I woke to my first full day in Korea and I decided since I had a totally free day I should head into Seoul and check out the capital city. Before leaving I knew my friend Brianna was in town so we decided that morning that we would get together that afternoon for lunch. Leaving town with my roommate John we got on the 10:30 train bound for Cheongnyangni Station in eastern section of Seoul. The ride was very pleasant and it gave us a good chance to check out some of the country side and suburbs as we continued into Seoul. I even spoke a few words to the Korean man next to me who knew zero English as he helped me with where we would be getting off in the city. Arriving without a printed guide to the city we just decided to walk along the main street as we exited the station just to see where it would take us. I don't know if it was because it was Saturday or not but the sidewalk was covered with vendors selling things from shirts, vegetables, various meats, and it was really was a cool site to see.


Calling Brianna at about 1 we took a cab over to her hotel which took about 25 minutes with traffic but only cost 10,000 won, which is roughly $7.75 so the conversion is not too difficult and the cabs are not that expensive. On a side note here is a picture of what their currency looks like, although recently this past month a 50,000 won bill note was released which they desperately needed as before the 10,000 note ~ ($7.75) has been their largest denomination.


Arriving at the Ritz Carlton I met Brianna and I was finally able exchange some of my smaller notes for 4 of their 50,000 so it was nice getting a bill bigger than ~ $8! She brought along her friend from work for lunch as we headed down the street for some Korean BBQ. Our meal consisted of several plates of kimchi, salad, rice, other appetizers which I can not name and also huge plate of various meets, bell peppers, and mushrooms in the center of the table on the grill. Everything was delightful as both the food, the company, and service were great. After lunch Brianna took us on a small tour of the area surrounding her hotel which had some cool hangout spots on the ally you can see below.
Continuing our tour of Seoul we again crossed the Han River via the subway and headed towards the Anguk station and the district Jongno-gu, an area which houses many of the old palaces that can be found inside the city limits. My main goal was to take a tour of Changdeokgung palace but since we missed the last English tour (the only way you can see it) at 3:30 we walked over to Gyeonbokgung palace instead, just down the street, and just walked the palace grounds and from the pictures and video of the tour below you can see it was really quite impressive. After the palace we went to the neighboring National Folk Museum of Korea, but we were so tired we only did the first floor.

The front gate of Changdeokgung (I will return a different date)

Geunjeongmun (Gate) and Yeongjegyo (Bridge) of Gyeongbokgung

Throne room

Me in traditional Korean palace garb

Gyeonghoeru (Royal Banquet Hall) and surrounding moat

National Folk Museum of Korea
We saw this group on the street and they were all yelling something. I am pretty sure they were protesting for the rights of dogs based on the picture and most of them had dogs with them on leashes.

Here is a video I took of a tour, I hope it works

We started to head home after our visit to the palace as we were exhausted from our first full day. As we arrived back at the train station is started to rain, but it was a hot rain as the tempature was still in the low 80s. Below was a pic i took on the train ride home. It is a driving range inside the city and it seems there are a lot of them as playing golf in Korea is insanely expensive with the average round costing $200. Shortly after taking this picture I slept till we got back to Yongmun station.

Before heading up to the English Village I stopped in a small take out restaurant for some chicken on a stick on some vegetable tempura. It was a good meal before passing out a short while later.


I have to say that I did a good job and got a lot done for only day 2 in Korea, stay tuned for more to come soon.