I spent the weekend before my trip to China in Seoul with my parents. It seemed like the logical thing to do since were going to have to in Incheon Monday, and my parents were interested in seeing Seoul. We headed Saturday around noon, after finalizing the last things for our China trip. We checked into our hotel, straight away to ditch our bags. We were staying at the Best Western in Dongdaemun, which you would do wise to avoid. It was just shitty, with tiny rooms, and no A/C and heating and TV's that turned themselves on full blast in the middle of the night...even after you may have turned the volume all the way down and press the mute button just to be safe, the second night, before going to bed. My parents said that they had stayed in Super 8 motels of higher quality...and it's not like it was a cheap hotel either, but on the plus side there might have been a error with the billing, and the stay could have been free. They are just that incompetent at the hotel. We took a quick run to Itaewan for lunch, and then spent the rest of Saturday in Yongsan, at the electronics market, where my parents picked up an MP3 player, and some DvD's, 2 legal, region free ones, and an "advanced" copy of the Return of the King, really high quality. As so marked the end of that evening. We caught the city tour bus on Sunday, and took in Namsangol village, Gyeongbok palace, Insadong and the Namsan tower. It was a busy but good day, and then the next morning we were off early to Incheon and our flight to China.
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Our hotel was on the street, right in front of Dongdaemun, one of the two, large city gates. I went for a quick walk after we got home to take a couple night pictures with my tripod.
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Just some buildings near out hotel. Just on the other side of these building, Dongdaemun market begins. It is one of the two major outdoor markets, and runs all through the night.
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In the folk village, we lucked out to arrive there while a traditional wedding was occurring. The groom was the foreign guy you can see in the picture, and his bride is the girl in the green who's face is being hidden by the cloth. It was actually a little boring, probably because I didn't the people involved, so we just watched for a short while before moving on.
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The village is at the foot of the north side of Namsan, quite close to Namdaemun market. Namdaemun is the other large market in Seoul. You can see Namsan tower in this picture. It's actually kind of a stubby tower compared those in North America, but I guess it doesn't have to be too tall since it has the natural advantage of being on the top of a small mountain in the centre of the city.
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There is a huge garden/park beside the folk village. This is a very pretty river bed that looked like it was suppose to be full of water, especially since there was a big basin for water at the bottom of it. But it was still quite nice empty.
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The main gate Gyeongbuk palace. It was nice to see with all of the flowers and greenery about. Last time I saw it was in January with Cory, Meredith and Chris, and all of the plants were brown and dead looking.
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There was a changing of the guards type thing happening as we arrived with people in traditional costumes, with weapons and everything.
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Happily, one the free English language tours was starting just as we arrived. Our tour group consisted of the three of us and two others who you can see in the pictures. It was quite an interesting tour, and added a lot more light to things that I didn't know from my last visit. I would recommend the tour vs. wondering. Although there is always plenty of time for wandering after the tour is over...it only takes an hour or so.
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This is the building the one building we missed in January. I tried to point it out, but I don't think people noticed. It's actually the bill on the back of the Korean 10,000 won bill. 10,000 is the biggest bill...worth around $11 CAN...for now.
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That's the top of the folk museum, in the palace. It seems to very photogenic, and I was delighted to once again find things in full bloom around it. I really can't express who nice it is to have plants finally looking alive after 7 months.
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At the entrance to the children's area of the folk museum, there was a display of different armed and unarmed Asian fighting styles. Performers were working alone and in pairs showing off just stances and mock combat. It was quite neat.
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Part of Seoul, looking down on it from top Seoul tower. This picture happily had very little glare from the windows. Those have to the most smuggle, reflection happy windows in the world. Not fun!
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I moved down to the base of the tower, which still had a very good view, since it was the top of a mountain, and happily there were no windows to shoot through, just some bars.
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We arrived just as the sun was starting to set, and left as dusk was fading. A picture of the tower, and we head back down the steep rode to where we had to catch the bus.
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