A Day Around Town

Yesterday was Korean Thanksgiving so our friend Thomas from Wonju came to spend the day with us. We were happy not to have grad school on such a nice fall day. We started off at 9am by climbing a small mountain, called "Im-wang-san." We were told there is a nice view of the city and the President's house from the top. It took us a little over an hour, but we reached the top and were treated with a nice view.

An old Buddha carved into the rocks on our way up the mountain.

One of the many views of the never-ending city that is Seoul.

B, H, & Thomas posing for a pic on top of Mt. Im-wang-san.

After climbing down, we continued walking until we reached the President's house. It's called the "blue house" due to the blue tiled-roof. We were surprised at how many people were out and about considering the big holiday; we figured more of them would be at home with family.

The President's house: Called the Blue House due to its blue-tiled roof.

Near the Blue House is the most famous palace, "Gyeong-bok-gung." With a normal entrance fee of about $3, it's one of the most expensive palaces to tour. But, due to the holiday, it was free to the public. There were hundreds of people in and around the palace. Some of the kids were dressed in the traditional Korean dress, "han-bok" so it was fun to see that.

Part of Gyeong-bok Palace; the most famous palace in Seoul.

A whole family sporting their "han-bok."

We even caught a changing of the guard ceremony.

After our walk around the palace, we headed to Insa-dong, which is the place for foreigners to find nice souvenirs. We were surprised when over half of the shops were open; the internet had said it would be almost completely shut down. We ran into an old friend from Wonju so we chatted with her for a bit and then it was off to find lunch. We had heard of this really good Mexican place about a mile from Insa-dong, so we walked down there only to realize it was one of the places that had shut down for the holiday. We settled on Indian food instead, and had a very tasty lunch indeed. After lunch we headed to City Hall, which we found to be completely under construction. They've been working on bits and pieces of it since we've been in Korea, but now they have the whole front facade hidden. It was still nice to see some green grass out on the lawn though.

City Hall covered up due to renovations.

After City Hall we continued walking to Nam-dae-mun market, since T had never been there. Some of the stalls were open, but since we had other places to go, we didn't stay long for any shopping. At 4pm we hopped on the subway and headed to the National Museum of Korea, which was showing the oldest known original painting found in Korea; it dates back to the 15th century. Surprisingly the museum was free, too, due to the holiday, and there were throngs of people taking advantage of that and the fact that this was one of only a few days to see the old and historic painting.

The line that we waited in to see the old painting.

After waiting for almost two hours, we were finally able to get up close to inspect the old, frail painting. It was a painting of a mythical horse/dragon and it looked really cool. We're happy we waited to see it.

Our day didn't end there. At about 6:30, we hailed a cab and drove to the financial district, home to Korea's tallest building, the 63 building. We were pleasantly surprised when the tickets to the observation floor were discounted 50%, we only had to pay $6 to ride the elevator to the top and have a look at the city all aglow!

Seoul by night.

Seoul by night.

A cool sculpture outside the 63 Building, with the nice full moon in the background.