Saturday in Seoul

The view from our Guesthouse window

We woke up really early on Saturday morning. Our room at the SWS Guesthouse is simple, but clean and nice. We have a coffee maker and hot pot to boil water, but no coffee. Coffee is a must for us, so we headed to the nearest convenience store for some instant coffee packets. After getting ready, we headed to the subway, which is just down the street. The subway system was as easy to navigate as we remembered, so in no time, we were on our way to the Korean War Memorial.

We met up with Caroline and Megan. Caroline is my sister-in-law's friend from childhood, and Caroline and Megan teach English in Busan, South Korea. We spent about an hour at the War Memorial, then headed to Namsan Seoul Tower.

The tower is about half the size of the Empire State Building. Seoulites are in shape and enjoy hiking. We saw many of them hiking up the hill to get to the tower. We took a taxi up the hill instead. The view was amazing at the base of the tower, and even more incredible at the top. The population of Seoul is around 10 million, and it's similar in size to New York City. The tall buildings seemed to go on forever! There is not much vegetation in Seoul...just a lot of concrete and buildings. You could see schools from the tower, and their playgrounds are made of sand, not grass. Many of the buildings have grass, trees, and gardens growing on their roofs. We came back down the tower, and then took a cable car back down to the main street level.

Caroline and Megan treated us to a traditional Korean lunch. We sat at a table with a little stove in the middle, where the restaurant staff cooked bulgogi for us (marinated meat like beef or pork). They brought out lots of little side dishes: kimchi, cabbage, tofu, coleslaw, lettuce, garlic, seaweed, etc. It was all so yummy. We attempted to eat with chopsticks, but the waitress who was watching us, ended up bringing forks for Tim and me. :) We also had kimchi soup with rice, and cold noodles in a broth. Both were much better than we expected.

After lunch, Caroline hailed a taxi for Tim, and he went back to the guesthouse. The girls then headed to Insadong to do some shopping. We found celadon pottery, traditional Korean fans, wedding ducks, jewelry, stainless steel chopsticks, and more. We ended our day with Starbucks, and then each headed our own ways. Thank you Caroline and Megan for such a fun day!