Friday morning, Jordan and I caught the 5500-1 bus into Seoul. Our directions were: "After you cross the Han River, you'll see a big huge warrior statue. The next stop is in front of a beautiful building, and across the street is a big pink and blue seashell thing. Get off there." That was how we were to find the Seoul City Tour bus stop.
Of course, yesterday being a holiday (Korea's independence from Japan), there were parades and street closings and finally our bus driver just kicked us off. We had no idea where we were, but we got out. Luckily, just a few steps ahead was one of the Seoul City Tour bus stops!!!
We waited a little over 30 minutes, and decided that it was probably either not running or on a different route because of the holiday. So we took matters into our own hands and decided to eat! We found a little Korean restauant where we had beef with rice, and Jordan was brave enough to try the tiny fish! (A little dried fish that you just eat whole):
She said it was super spicy, so I thought I ought not try it.
After lunch we went to Gyeongbokgung Palace. It was the main palace for the Joseon dynasty, was constructed in 1395, burned down during a Japanese invasion in 1592, and was reconstructed in 1868. It was beautiful:
The main gate:
They were setting up for a huge celebration something-or-other. AJ said he and Danielle saw that the President was speaking - maybe from where we were??? :)
This is the throne hall from the outside:
And from the inside: (the colors are absolutely breathtaking)
Proof that I was actually there:
This is a pavilion use for royal banquets. It was almost totally surrounded by water, and was incredibly beautiful:
The palace grounds were enormous, and it was way too huge to see everything. After the palace, we went into the National Palace Museum of Korea. It was kind of small, and they didn't have a lot of the blurbs about the artifacts in English, just the titles of things. Still I found this very interesting:
This is a 3/4 scale replica of a placenta jar and monument. Basically, when the royal family had a child, they erected these HUGE monuments just to hold the infants umbilical cord and placenta. Isn't that wild?! Imagine someone was so excited about your birth that you got your own structure to house the part most people throw away! It was crazy to me.
After the museum, we decided to go to Itaewon. This is where the US Army Base is, and we'd heard there were lots of foreigners there. Sure enough, as soon as we stepped off the subway we heard tons of English. The whole street is filled with vendors and shops and FOREIGNERS GALORE!
I took this picture, because it tickled me. We were on a main road, and found this sign pointing down a back alley:
"Come foreigners. Come down a back alley. We'll translate for you, we promise!"
Also, this made me laugh (so American!):
Finally, every major city's got to have one:
After all the walking, we were exhausted and decided to call it a day. However, I'm going with Jordan and George back to Itaewon tonight - we're going SALSA DANCING!!! (which really means those two will be salsa dancing, and I'll be the very white girl swaying in her seat, hahahah)
Last but certainly not least, here's a picture for my very dear friend Michele. I hope she appreciates it :)
Love you all!
5 comments:
I loved the back alley translation!! The buildings are so unique and beautiful. You must be having a blast. Did you find any cheap goods at the markets yet? I would be a shopping fool there. I noticed that the streets are in bad repair; is that because the country is poor? What are the taxes like? Is there sales tax, property tax, etc.?
How is your Korean coming along?
You have a wonderful blog going on and amazing pictures - I can't wait to read more. In fact, I was jonesing for a new blog post since Thursday but the wait was worth it.
Mary
I love the picture Em! Thanks so much! I wonder what the girl scout cookies are like there? Any with seaweed? As you know I don't have internet at my house so I haven't been able to check your blog...but I'm managing to steal a "very weak" signal from the neighbors for the moment so I've spent the past hour reading all your entries, comments, and photos. I love it! Maybe I should have chronicled my times here on the rez. Though definitely not as interesting. Anyway, I plan to make lots more comments shortly. Is there a way where it will let me know when you've posted something new, or do I just have to keep checking on my own? Ok, love you!
Michele - Thanks for checking it all out!!! I just looked, and I'm not sure how to set it up so you get an e-mail every time, but I will keep checking. And I'll let you know if I get hit up for cookie purchases!!
Mary - I haven't noticed that anything is taxed here. When you go shopping or to a restaurant, the price you see is actually what you pay. It's actually a fairly wealthy country, but Itaewon (that neighborhood) is very very old. My Korean is still slow and broken. It's easy to learn the letters, but much harder to learn the translations and the sentence structure. So wish me luck :)
If you ever make it back to the Hard Rock (in the next year) would you pick me up a regular old Hard Rock shot glass for my ridiculously large collection? I have some weird desire to visit all the world's hard rock's (or at least get a shot glass from someone who went there) :) Spanks!
Your blog is so cool. I love seeing what you are up to. You are very talented and quite the writer. I miss my favorite person from Korea
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