psychedelic s(e)oul... pt 1

Being as this has taken me a week to write... a paragraph here and there... and also that photos seem to make things very complicated. I'll eventually finish talking about Seoul.

This weekend being a Korean holiday that foreigners don't celebrate (obviously), some friends and I thought it would be a good time to visit Seoul. For the most part, it was a good opportunity. In some cases, the closing of certain places (like the Chipotle/Qdoba ripoffs!) not so much. But omg, there's so much to see there! And thanks to our personal slave driver -- just kidding, Sam. Lots of love to you!--  


Our group of 4 arrived Thursday afternoon via the "slow train." Really, just the normal train. KTX will get us to Seoul in less than an hour. The normal train takes about 2. I mean. That's my drive from my hometown in VA to my university. There was a bookstore that had Korean language workbooks, and I should've gotten some that day because it was closed when we came back... I pine for those. 


We searched for an underground game store for my nerdy boyfriend- he found a PS2 slim, and was able to get it modded by the seller. That's so not done in America. So now he can play games from most any country, bypassing region codes. Oh, and he can bypass region codes on DVDs, so I (we) can watch movies on my giant TV, and I can be fully justified in not ever subscribing to cable here. 


Daejeon has some, too but we found Indian restaurants in Seoul and it was EXCITING and DELICIOUS. Aside from Korean-ized fast food and Korean-ized pizza, I hadn't had any food that wasn't Korean or something resembling Korea's style since leaving home. Granted the first Indian place we went to (we ate Indian the second night, too) was owned and run by Koreans, but it was a great change from kimchikimchikimchi. 


Thursday and Friday compiled a long list of fails.  A store called Roundup, fail. Chipotle/Qdoba rip-off, fail. Random temple, fail. We weren't going to get in for free. Malls at D...onsa...dong?- fail.  Our general conclusion about Chuseok: it sucks! j/k really, but it was frustrating that so much was closed for SO LONG (days!) However, Seoul Tower made(saved) Friday. I saw my first sunset, all of Seoul, and the city lights turn on. 

The windows had locations around the world and their distances- so we could see which direction and how far someplace like North Korea was. Or home. Seeing "Washington" printed on a window panel was beautiful. 


Our original plans for Saturday were scrapped when someone heard that Itewan(sp) may not have anything going on afterall (this is the "foreigner" place... like America Town. ATown...) Somewhere else was a temple, a palace, and the "Blue House"- Korea's apparent equivalent to the White House. It has another name that starts with a c... Koreans don't seem to know "Blue House."

Temple was awesome with it's canopy of lanterns. Palace was beautiful, enormous, and still unfinished. While walking, I got the rundown of Asian history around the time of WWII. It's interesting learning a bit about what was going on on the other side of the world while the west had its own serious drama happening. Japan demolished many of the temples and palaces when it invaded Korea, so most historical sites are reconstructed. How amazing would it have been to see the original structures. (Random note, at Seoul Tower there was a COLDSTONE CREAMERY. How absolutely random.