When I left you last, I was in the subway on the way to meet a couple of people with whom I had gone to school with back in Canada. We met at Seoul Station because of it's convenience and dropped our bags at the local Lotte Mart.
Little Korean travel tip if you don't want to carry your bag around all day stop by a department store and drop it off. They have lockers near the entrance, to use them all you need is a 100 won coin which you get back when you take out your bag.
We made our way over to Insadong for lunch at a small traditional Korean restaurant and ate all this. To introduce you the we was Hyekyoung and YooMin.
Insadong is a walking street close to downtown Seoul, there are many coffee shops and people selling crafts. Neat vibe. One must stop is the guys who make some kind of candy from honey and nuts, they have a chant that explains what they are doing, because I wasn't Korean the did a special version and it was hilarious. I found that the candy, on the other hand, was a little bland.
What would a big city be with out some wall art?
YooMin is from Incheon which is right by Seoul, she had done some research and so when ever we were wondering what to do next she pulled out a paper with a list of things to do, the times, prices and how to get there. Solid.
Next stop was the Seoul Tower, we were not alone. This was the shuttle bus to the top.
While there we (sort of)saw a traditional wedding ceremony, rode the fastest elevator in the world, mailed a postcard from the highest Post Office in Korea and I used my first coupon in Korea and saved 900 won($0.90).
If you remember from one of my trips to Busan(found here), you have heard me mention "love locks" before. "Love locks" are locks that couple who are in secure to something in a popular area to tell of their love for each other. At the base of the tower was a large area dedicated to this, there were five of these trees and then you can see in the background the fence is covered as well. I would guess the number of locks to be somewhere in the hundreds of thousands. I guess lots of people love each other.
By the time we were done looking around Seoul Tower it was early evening so we headed to Myeongdong to do a little shopping and then to School Food for dinner.
From here Hyekyoung left us to meet up with another friend and YooMin and I headed for Incheon. She kindly offered that I could stay the night and having no reservations at any another accommodation, I gladly accepted the offer. As I found out I was the first foreigner that had stayed with her family, cool. They were very welcoming and I felt very much at home.
Her mother cooked up a feast of rice, seaweed, kimbap, crab soup and fruit for brunch after which we headed out once again for the one and a half hour ride back to Seoul. I counted it up and over the course of the three days I was in Seoul I spent almost 15 hours on or waiting for public transportation. That does not include the 4.5 hour bus ride to and from Geoje. Here is one of the better decorated subway tunnels... or mine shafts, you decided.
Our activity for the day consisted of going to Lotte Korea Folk Museum in Lotte World, which is a huge mall and amusement park and a few other things. Once we finally got in it reminded me of the Museum of Man and Nature in Winnipeg. It went through the entire history of Korea. It was good but by the end we were both historied out.
I saw once we finally got in because the line took almost an hour. In the picture you will see the line and there were only about 5 more people out of the frame. When we got to the window we found out what the wait was all about. Apparently if you have the right credit card you can save 50% so the people in front of us had 10 cards out(I counted). To see if the discount applied they had to swipe all of them one at a time and wait for them to be processed. The entrance to the museum was 5000 won...
We went for supper and by that time it was time for me to catch my bus back home, we said our goodbyes and that was Seoul. Hope you enjoyed it. Stay tuned for a post on short skirts in Korea.
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