We woke up to a misty morning and headed up to the club lounge for breakfast. Life is tough so it was time for a full English! Next we headed down to the travel desk to try and organise the weekend. Today we headed out into Seoul for a city tour using a hop-on-hop-off bus. That was the east part, we had to get to the bus by underground.
The nearest station was about 500m away, and we found that OK. We then found the ticket machines. They issue re-usable ticket cards here for which you pay a 1,000 wong deposit. All stations have a name in Korean, a name in English and a 3 digit number, the first digit is the line number and the other 2 numbers are the station number. To get the ticket you punch in the destination number and then some cash. Out comes the change and the ticket. Total cost for 16 stations was 300 wong! ($3.50) of which 1000 wong ($1) was refundable. Not bad.
We got a little lost when we had to transfer to another line, but a young guy asked if he could help and not only told us how to get to the other line, he insisted on walking us there and waiting til we got on the train. Amazing
We got off the train at a palace, I won’t even try to put names to places, it’s too late. We timed it perfectly as there was a changing of the guard ceremony just about to start. One unusual thing, there were two oriental guys (Korean or Chinese or Japanese) who asked if they could have their picture taken with us. I know we are deeply in the minority out here, but I didn’t think we were that rare.
View From Palace Grounds
Palace Main Gate
New Guard Marching In
More Guards
The Guy With the Big Drum
Old Guard
Guard Leader
We watched this for a while, and looked around the grounds, then headed off to catch the bus. For a 2 hour route, with as many on / offs as we wanted until 7pm we were charged 10,000 wong each!
Next stop was at a Korean village reconstruction showing houses, gardens and general village layout of years gone by. Again I’ll let the pictures speak. We met a family there from Ottawa, the husband was on a 5 year contract working as an engineer and his wife and son were visiting. He explained a little about Korean life, it seems male chauvinists would be at home here. Where he works all the secretaries are single, and good looking. Marriage is a cause for dismissal, as I suspect is aging.
Entrance to Korean Village
Korean Village Houses
Fall Colours
Todays Mystery Object
Last stop was a market. Once we finally found it we were amazed at it’s size. At first we though the market was just a few small shops. Then we went into a shop and found that the backs of all the shops opened up into a long building about 5oom long, it was ridiculous! We wandered around there for quite a while, then decided to head back to the bus. Problem is, where was the bus stop. We walked back along the indoor market to where we thought the correct exit was, WRONG!, we walked around the complete building before finally recognising where we were.
Outside the Market
Lyn Checking Out the Market
Time to get back on the bus and complete the tour, then catch the subway back. The first part was easy, the second less so. We went back to the palace where we got off the train, but it was now closed. This wrecked our planning as the subway station came up in the palace grounds. Luckily a little waking and a little help from another local got us to the station.
The city is kept clean by a number of street sweepers. This one obviously took pride in his work as he was sweeping up the leaves.
Artistic Street Sweeper
Back to the hotel after around 8 hours sight seeing found us a little tired! A trip up to the lounge found some refreshing (free) beer and wine and enough hors d’ouevres and deserts to make a meal.
Hope the above makes sense, yesterdays long day and travel as well as today’s has tired me out, I think I need a vacation.