Finally, some Seoul

I would have brought this to you a lot sooner. However, all this traveling has taken its toll and I've been sick.

I finally got the chance to make it up to the heart of Korea, otherwise known as Seoul. It's a five hour bus ride from Changwon, thanks to the traffic. Just to give you an idea where I was going from and to -- here's is a map. I journeyed all the way from Changwon which is the red circle at the bottom, to the circle at the top of the map. Nolan and I left right after work on Thursday. After an entire day of dealing with kids, the five hour bus ride was actually a welcomed treat. I got to finish up the book I was reading, Life of Pi (which if you haven't read, yet, you should), and I got to listen to some RadioLab along the way (one of my favorite podcasts, here's a link to their website, http://www.wnyc.org/shows/radiolab/.

I'd start with the Morality episode. It's the one I started off with, and it had me hooked ever since.)

Okay so back to my trip. After five hours of reading, and listening to podcasts and music, the bus finally made it to Seoul. Once I was off the bus I still had a while to go. Thank goodness Nolan accompanied me through the trip, although I still felt completely lost. The hostel we were staying at gave us complicated directions on how to get there. We maneuvered our way through the Seoul Metro and reached our final stop. Once we got to the street we needed to be at, our directions became more confusing. We asked around, luckily most people in Seoul know English. This was pretty awesome, since neither Nolan nor I have ever ventured the streets of Seoul. We located our hostel and Nolan spotted this sign welcoming us to our hostel. That's right, no guests allowed in the guesthouse!

We were starving the minute we got off the bus, an hour or so later after finding our destination and settling into our quarters I think we were ready to eat just about anything.

We befriended some other people that had just arrived at the hostel shortly after us. We went with our new friends to wander the streets and find a place to eat. We found a bunch a restaurants open. Don't forget we were wandering the streets at midnight in search of dinner. We settled on this outdoor place where we had Samgyeopsal.

Here's us enjoying our midnight meal along with some soju. This was our food that we all helped devour.

This was the cool Korean man that helped us grill our meat, because we certainly don't know how long to keep it on there.

I spotted this little gem on our way back. If you read nothing else in this blog post, then please just read this. It makes no sense but I found it funny. I don't know how I feel about men that are made from 100% beef.
The next morning it was just Nolan and I armed with a Lonely Planet guidebook. It's is an excellent companion for any traveler. That book has come in handy numerous time when we've been out searching for hostels or other popular locales in other cities.

After thumbing through the pages we settled on visiting the North Seoul tower. Before heading to the train station we stopped in at a place called the Persian Palace to have some lunch. This was by far my favorite part of visiting Seoul. All the food! Any kind you wanted from any country.
We followed the camels all the way into the Persian Palace.
This was our food. I forgot what Nolan got, but his thing is in the genie lamp. All I can tell you is that it had chicken in it. I got shami kebab. I have to say we were both pleased with our meal. We don't really get many places to have ethnic food out in Changwon, unless we take a trip to Busan which is about 40 minutes away. After we stuffed ourselves with delicious food we made our way to the tower.
We took the train to Seoul station.
Here's a view of the area right as we got out of the station.
When you make a turn the opposite way you can see the N Soeul tower from the station. We'd be headed to the top of that thing in no time! They have cable cars going to the top. We opted not to take them because we were keen on climbing up Namsan to get to the tower. Little did we know how many steps there were to the top.
I have no idea who this guy is, but he looks pretty badass on that horse. I'm guessing he might be a Korean independence fighter.

But, I do happen to know that this is Li Si-Yeong, and he is a Korean independence movement leader.This is just Nolan climbing up a whole bunch of steps. The sad part is that this was just the beginning of the steps. We had a ton more to climb.
Here are more steps. I just want to get the point across that there were a lot! On left of this picture is a cool science museum we popped into. I won't spend to much time on what was in there. It was pretty standard stuff about electricity, biology, engineering, and acoustics.

Here's a neat clip of magnetic fluid.

So we got back on track to go to the top of N Seoul Tower. Here's some more hardcore folks who are brave enough to take all the steps.
When we got to the semi top there was a lookout deck for people to stop ad enjoy the view.I managed to weave through the crowd and get to the edge to take this picture with the city behind me.
Here's some Seoul rush-hour gridlock.
Unfortunately, we hadn't reached the complete top just yet. Here's more stairs. When we did get to the top there were a whole bunch of things going on. There were street vendors to buy souvenirs from, places to chill out, and a neat heART exhibit that was displayed.
Here's the heART exhibit they had out in front of the entrance to the tower. This one is especially dear to me because half of it's an ostrich. I like to think of it as an turstrich. While I was teaching an English summer camp my first month here I learned some of the Korean words for animals, because I made my kids draw their favorite animals. One of the girls drew an ostrich and I learned that thajo is the Korean word ostrich. Don't ask why, but for some reason I thought that word was really cool. It was awesome to say and I felt cool knowing how to say ostrich in Korean. It's one of the words I'm never going to forget learning. So this is why I hold this ostrich-heart looking thing dear.

Straight ahead of the ostrich was this.
That's N Seoul Tower. It sits on top of Namsan, which is the mountain we climbed up with the help of all the stairs. The tower sits 479.7 m (1,574 ft) above sea level.
Here's some people chilling at a sweet outdoor eatery.
We saw a few historical performance artists walking back to store away a few weapons. This guy had some swords and shields.And then there was this guy. He went with the trusty, time tested, no fail sound box to ward of his enemies.
We finally made it up to the top of the tower.
Inside they have windows that lookout onto Seoul. The windows are also lined with names of different cities and their highest peaks.Remember those people sitting and enjoying their sweet view? Here they are again looking even tinier.
Even the view from the bathroom did not disappoint.
After making it out of the tower we rode the cable car down from the mountain.
I can't imagine having to walk down all those steps. This was not the end of our first full day in Seoul. I have so much more to share, which is why I'm splitting this Seoul trip into two posts. So I'll bring you the next half as soon as I get a chance to blog again.