On Monday I had another exciting day in Korea.
I started the day off slowly by watching some Korean cartoons and going for a stroll in the Olympic park again with Alicia.
A strange sculpture with natural grass in the park.
Another view of the Olympic park and the monument inside it.
A very bike friendly city, Korea has bike pumps at many of the bike racks situated throughout the city. Also, on a lot of staircases there are every tiny bike ramps.
For lunch we headed for Lotteworld Department store. As many of you may or may not know many large department stores in Korea (and Japan from what I've heard) house supermarkets and food courts on the bottom floor. Delicious and affordable we decided to eat at one. Pictured is a desert stand. We ate some sort of rice, fish and egg on a stick thing. I wish I knew the actual term and could be more descriptive than that but that is how I would describe it. It was very delicious, I wish they had that in American food courts. Another thing that I found unique about a lot of food stands and street vendors is that they sold fruit on a stick instead of ice cream or other overly sweet items.
We took a different way back and passed a bunch of small side streets filled with interesting items.
After lunch Alicia and I met up with her friend from Stony Brook Min and we went to Gyeongbok Palace. To me it is very expansive and quite large. It was gorgeous; there were many separate buildings and gardens. The palace was one of the largest and was considered one of the main palaces in Korea. It is currently being re-constructed (heavy construction all over) due to destruction in wars. Approximately 40% of the original palace still remains.
One of the King's quarters. Brightly painted exterior and interior with huge ceilings.
Statue of a guardian animal to guard the palace. Min says she thinks this particular one pictured was a chicken... Instead of following the guided tour given by the palace, Min gave us the history that involved every last detail about the concubines of the palace. ;P
An interior view of the high ceiling of one of the king's spaces.
A view of a stone railing, enclosed walkway and mountains. It was amazing how if you looked one way you saw mountains and if you looked another way you saw a bustling modern city skyline.
I took so many wonderful pictures of the palace grounds it was hard to pick which ones to post.
The king's banquet hall was on the water raised on stilts.
Such a beautiful landscape.
A slightly more close up shot of the colorful decorations on the buildings.
The tall building in the distance is now an art museum.
Don't open the well Min, we don't want a curse to follow us back!
A view from right outside of the palace; a busy intersection.
After going to the palace we went to this very cute area full of little coffee shops and specialty stores. Forgive me for not remembering the name of the section of the city but it was adorable. It was definitely a hot spot for hip and trendy twenty somethings to hang out. We even saw an on location photo shoot going on. Probably for some sort of clothing store/magazine.
For dinner we stopped by a traditional Korean food place and got some cold noodles and dumplings. They were so delicious I wish I had taken a photograph of it before i devoured it to show you all. The noodles were slightly sweet and very thin while the dumplings were large and flavorful.
After and long, but painless and easy subway ride (I really like the subways, so new, clean and organized) I got back to my room and went to bed. Thus concludes another day in Seoul.See you next time,
~Val
No comments:
Post a Comment