Seoul

Jan 3rd to 7th, 2011

After spending a few days in the air traveling from Minneapolis to Paris to Kuala Lumpur to the Incheon airport, we crash hard at an airport motel.  The next morning we wake up to a bright and surprisingly cold morning, and figure out how to get from Incheon to Seoul. The clean, efficient, cheap metro is an easy way to go.  

Next challenge is finding our hostel from the metro stop, and we chuckle that one of the first sites is a huge red crab on the side of a building.

The neighbourhood looks funky and cool, and we find a place to eat.  No English menus, so we point the the one entree that has a picture next to it. It's lots of seafood and noodles, and it's delicious.

Our wanderings find us in a supersweet coffeeshop that has tons of supersweet books you can read while sitting on some supersweet furniture.  I've never had an latte this delicious before, and the froth is so thick it defies the laws of physics.

South Korea likens itself as the design capital of the world, and there are a lot of museums to showcase it.  We found a little museum in our neighbourhood - the exhibit was in Korean only so couldn't get the full meaning - but there were some fun old signs and technology around.

We're in the University District so there's tons of little shops and young hip people around, and we have fun poking around the place.  Once the sun goes down it goes from chilly to unbearable, and we warm up in a delicious hibachi bbq restaurant.  There's rumours of cool places to quaff some drinks, but we're so tired and cold we crash out early.

Next day we head to Isa-dong, and arty neighbourhood down the way.  We check out a Buddhist temple in the middle of the city, and visit a bunch of funky art galleries.

We find a cool rooftop Korean restaurant for lunch, and enjoy the spicy food and warm atmosphere.

That evening we head to Seoul Square to catch a bullet train from Seoul to Busan.   Can't wait to finally see my old college roomy, MARY!