Korea - Day 2

After free breakfast in the executive lounge (did I mention that Joonhaeng is a pimp) we piled into a small bus for a tour of Seoul.

Many of the tourist areas in Seoul are closed on Mondays so our choices were limited, but we made out OK.  Unfortunately it was raining in the morning so we all got a little wet.  We started out in the market area looking for a tea shop, but it was too early in the morning so we took off.

Then we wandered some of the historical looking buildings (most of the city was destroyed in the war but they maintain the authentic look of some of the residences in this particular neighborhood).

Our next stop was the Korean President's house (like our White House).  This merited a human MIT.

We returned to the market for tea and I re-confirmed that I do NOT like tea.

After that we went to lunch at a quaint little dumpling house.  We had to sit on the floor, but it was quite nice because the floors used the Korean heating system (I don’t know how they heat the floors now-a-days but years ago they used charcoal and stones under the floor which kept smoke out of the palaces and helped to maintain them).

After lunch we headed to the main palace of the Joseon dynasty (1392 to 1910).  Most of the palace was destroyed by the Japanese in 1592 and 1910 but the Koreans have restored parts of it.

Then we headed to downtown Seoul to check out the buildings and see the river walk.

• Bottom right: Stones across the water clearly merits a human MIT.
• Middle: We apparently took too long to take our MIT picture.
• Bottom left: Flags of all of the countries that assisted South Korea in the Korean war.

After the downtown area we headed up to the Seoul Tower for a scenic view of Seoul and a fancy dinner.

Finally we headed back to the hotel.  We were supposed to Karaoke tonight but everyone was still tired from the trip so they all went to bed.  Joonhaeng and I went to the sauna for an hour (no cloths sauna = no pictures) and then we headed to bed.  We had to get up at 5:45 so we could catch a train to Gyeongju.