Food and Fun
Trip Start
Nov 22, 2008
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2
6
Trip End
Nov 30, 2008
Seoul,
Korea Rep.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Yesterday was a great day. The weather was really nice. Probably in the 50s I would guess. We headed out on the subway to the old part of Seoul. We were going to do a hop on hop off bus tour, but it was not running on Mondays. So then we took a cab to the National Folk Museum. It was nice and showed the history of Korea on one wall. Very big accomplishment considering the first entry on the timeline was 700,000BC. We learned about the Japanese occupation of Korea in 1900's. Both Misoo and Jong's grandmothers speak Japanese well, and do not like Japanese people very much due to the occupation. I think the Korean's were not allowed to be educated (I could have misunderstood this), so Jong's grandfather opened his own school so that he could learn unofficially.
Next we met Jong for lunch in an old but trendy part of Seoul. Tons of restaurants and nice shops. We ate at a great, traditional Korean restuarant. The whole meal took only about 20 minutes from ordering to being done eating. We had cold noodle soup in a nice broth with vegetables in it and a hard boiled egg. It was very very good. They serve this soup in metal bowls. Then they brought out kind of a burner contraption with seasoned beaf on it and rice cakes that were delicious (nothing like the Quaker kind, nothing at all). They looked like big white larvae, but tasted like heaven :-) Jong cut the meat up with scissors, and we all just eat from the skillet. It was realy good. The restaurants always give you cold water, which is so nice and refreshing. I am trying to get the hang of chopsticks. I'm not doing too bad. Sometimes I get the hang of it, then all of a sudden I lose the knack, so I hope to be consistent by the end of the trip.
Then Jong went back to work. We shopped some, and then had dessert. which was green tea waffles with green tea ice cream. It was warm and yummy. After that we went to this giant palace. I loved it. It had reallly nice lines and form to it. The buildings are all one story, but beautiful, colorful and having a very calm presence. After that we went to a traditional village (a pretend one in the city), and we received a free private tour from a lovely Korean volunteer woman. We learned about traditional households. Then we went to the Namsum tower (probably not spelled right) for dinner and we went to the to pof it to see the city of Seoul all lit up at night. It was very beautiful.
We were home at 8pm. So tired. My feet were sore. I am too vain and have to wear my cool boots around which isn't the best for my feet. I slept so well last night.
Need to go. Almost time for breakfast. We just ate breakfast. It was a salad, cucumber, tomato, chicken, rice soup, coffee, hard boiled egg and sweet potato!!
Comments
Cool!
Sounds like you are having a really cool time. Make the most of your Thanksgiving week. I am writing this from our hotel room in Montgomery, AL. Love, Mom