Seoul Trip and Other Bits
Tuesday we went to Seoul. We got there around 1 pm and made our way to Gyeongbok Palace only to find out that it is closed on Tuesday and only Tuesday. I took some photos of the outside and we moved on.
Our next stop was a McDonald’s in Myeongdong. We were on our way to Namsan Tower and just happened to stop there. I don’t know why we ate in McDonald’s, but we did. Of course, we saw Americans there. I would have been surprised if we didn’t.
After our meal we headed up Namsan Tower. Well, we didn’t actually go up the tower (it was free, though), but we did go all the way up the mountain which provided us with a great view of Seoul and all of its smog. We took the cable car down the mountain after walking part of the way up and taking the bus the rest of the way up.
We took a cab back to Myeongdong after seeing Namsan and proceeded to shop until 6. I bought a coat at TBJ which I really like. I’m trying to see if I can find a website that sells TBJ and will ship to America because I really like a lot of their clothes. Myeongdong had a lot of cool stores, and I wish we had gone in more of them but for some reason we didn’t. Tomorrow we are going shopping again so hopefully I will be able to buy myself some more clothes then.
At 6 we took the subway to COEX Mall (which is the only real, western-style mall in Korea) and met a friend from school there. We ate dinner at some Chinese restaurant. The dish I had was pretty hot, but not the worst I’ve ever had. After eating we looked around the mall at various stores at which I bought a few things for myself and others.
We left the mall after who knows how long and got on the subway. We parted ways with our friend when we got off at Gangnam Station. We found the nearest jjimjilbang and stayed the night there.
The next morning we got up and took a cab to the nearest subway station and then took the subway to Insadong where we shopped. They have a lot of cool traditional Korean things there and cool souvenir-type items. After shopping for a while we walked down the street to the Cheongyecheon stream and checked it out.
Seeing as our first visit to Gyeongbok Palace was a bust, we decided to go back and see it for real. It was a huge place and I’m sure we only saw a very small part of it, but what we saw was really cool. It definitely made me feel like I was in Asia, as the buildings were in stereotypical Asian style.
Once we finished at Gyeongbokgung we took the bus back to Daejeon and rested for a while. We met up with some of Daniel’s friend for dinner, two of whom I knew from church and the other two I had never met. We had some extremely hot food, the hottest I’ve had here so far. It wasn’t bad at all, just very hot. We went to a noraebang (karaoke) after we ate, and it was a lot more fun than I thought it was going to be. Apparently we are getting one in Champaign during second semester, so I will definitely be taking some American friends to it.
Today I did absolutely nothing, which is sad because at around $83 a day (only taking into account the ticket), Korea is too expensive to sit and do nothing. As I said earlier, we are going shopping again tomorrow, so I hope to buy some more cool clothes.
There are a ton of new photographs on flickr, but I’m sure that anyone reading this has already seen them because I uploaded them over a day ago. Look for new photos tomorrow.
In my boredom today I fiddled with the blog’s design a bit, so if something seems different you didn’t go crazy - I probably changed it. I hope it is easier to read and navigate now.