Category: Seoul

On my final day in Seoul, I sort of hit the skids. There was a lot that I wanted to see, but unfortunately, being a Monday, most museums and palaces were closed. So I aimed for the tackiest of tourist attractions: The Space Needle – or whatever the Koreans call it. It is positioned at the dead geographic center of Seoul and is definitely geared towards young romantic couples. There were expensive restaurant packages you could purchase for use on special floors at the top and a juvenile elevator ride with special space effects video to watch on the ceiling. Plus the usual pictures take. On arrival at the top as a momento of the occasion (for $ of course). The view was quite extensive, although it was a bit hazy again. Seoul is a very big city of ~12,000,000 people, so it is quite amazing to see sprawled out everywhere with mountains on the fringes and a river running through the middle.

The ride to the top and bottom included a cable car that plopped you down afterwards at the bottom in an interesting neighbourhood of pedestrian shopping alleys that seemed to extend indefinitely around the city, full of little shops, restaurants, and food stalls. Maybe all of Seoul is like that. It is very nice. The variety and number of eating places is quite amazing. And there is no shortage of cafes to give Starbucks here plenty of competition.

Now at the airport awaiting my flight to San Francisco, I have been very impressed with Korea and would like to come back to check out more. Very nice people, great food of every kind, excellent slick public transportation network, world’s best airport for eight years running (or so they are claiming – it is very nice) including a great express train into the center of town, and super-fast wifi everywhere you go (sometimes free, like everywhere here in the airport or at cafes, restaurants, museums, and hotels, or sometimes cheap at about $3 a day for access throughout the city including the entire subway and train system). There also appears to be quite a bit of mountain biking, hiking, and probably paddling around outside of the city, as well as road biking throughout the city.

Only downside has been the weather, which is comparable to the northeastern U.S. for this time of year: a bit colder and darker than I’m used to coming from sunny Australia.

Well, two days into my South Korean visit and I’m quite impressed! It has a bit of a cold, dark, dank Tokyo feel to it, but that’s probably largely due to the season. It seems much easier to travel around than Tokyo because so many people seem to at least know some English. Those speaking fluent English have not been afraid to come out and help me when I’ve appeared dazed or confused trying to find my hotel or navigate the subway system.

My hotel room is TINY, but I knew that when I signed up. It’s only $50 a night and it had rave Trip Advisor reviews, so I jumped on the deal. It has everything you need (private shower right over toilet, big HD color TV, tea pot, fridge, bed). I’m very happy with the place, in hip Sinchon, which is full of funky shops, bars, restaurants, and right on the excellent subway system. A bit of a university neighborhood, which is always nice. The people who run it are very nice, speak fluent English, and are very good at offering suggestions on what to see and do.

Seoul is very safe and I’ve found most people to be very friendly and patient with a foreign language speaker like myself. I always feel obligated to ask how safe the area is for me to be walking around with a camera – and I often get laughed at like it was a stupid question because it IS so safe.

I headed out towards the 1395 Gyeongbokgung Palace to check it out and a few other things in it’s neighborhood this afternoon. An amazing and huge place that borders the South Korean President’s house in the back. Sadly, the Japanese destroyed the place TWICE over the years, burning it to the ground in 1592 and tearing down a previously restored version during WWII so they could plop their own HQ in its place. Now restored again, we’ll see how long it lasts this time!

There were a few free excellent museums adjacent to the palace, one on the palace and another on Korean folk art. After getting palaced-out I strolled into a few busy historic neighborhood nearby that was full of homes and shops preserved in traditional Korean architectural styles and very wealthy owners. After that, I kept walking south into the center of town through countless pedestrian malls closed to traffic to find a canal that ran next to public walkways. Too bad they had a few too many foot crossing stones permanently affixed – it would have made a great little whitewater paddling circuit!