Greetings from Aspan Park, SK: My Trip to Seoul

I should write about my trip before too much time passes and I forget what I've done and seen. (I wrote the previous sentence and the following paragraph a week and a half ago. By this point I have to go through my ticket stubs to piece together my trip.)

Well, we had off from Christmas day through after the New Year. It was a nice, long break and would have been a shame if I didn't take advantage of it. I've only been here for a month and a half at the start of the break and only have one pay check in the bank so my options were limited to what could be done cheaply. On a whim I decided to see if it was possible to have an inexpensive few days in Seoul. Seoul is the capital of South Korea and about half the population of the country lives in the metro area. Quite easily, I managed to book a hostel and buy train tickets. So that was it, I would head to Seoul the Monday after Christmas and stay for three days.

I arrived at the main train station, DongDaegu Station, and had an 11am KTX (Korea Train Express) bound for Seoul. Less than two hours later I arrived at Seoul Station. From there I headed to my hostel in the Hongdae area of Seoul, checked in quickly, and departed to get as much sightseeing in as possible.

I should note that Seoul has a massive subway system on par with cities like New York and Tokyo. Much larger than I can navigate with ease, but luckily I have a great application on my Itouch that takes all the guess work out of subway navigation. This app saved me much time that would've otherwise been spent staring at subway maps.

My first stop in Seoul was Gyeongbokgung Palace. I don't know what the say about the palace. I mean, once you've seen one palace, you've seen them all. (I saw a total of three in Seoul and many others during my travels through Asia) The palace area was pretty with mountains in the background. Just check out the pictures; I'm afraid my descriptive skills are sub par. After the palace, I headed over to Insadong, which is a big tourist stop with lots of traditional shops. It was a fun place to walk around even though it was freezing outside. Next, I headed over to the Gangnam area of Seoul where a friend of mine from high school taught. It was great to see Sung after five years. Its so crazy that that reunion took place in Korea. We went to TGI Fridays, of all places, for dinner.

The next day I checked out two more palaces: Changdeokgung Palace and Deoksugung Palace. Honestly, It's hard for me to remember which palace is which. Lots of pretty buildings, that's all I remember. One of the palaces (I don't remember which one) had an art museum attached to it. It was nice, but small. After checking out the two palaces and spending way too much time in the cold and snow, I wanted to spend a time indoors. I decided to head to the COEX Mall. It's apparently famous for being the largest underground shopping center in Asia. In my opinion, it was just a large mall, but it was good to get out of the cold. Oh, I also went to Namdaemun Market, the largest traditional marketplace in Seoul in between checking out the palaces. This market, just like every other traditional market I've been to is quite overwhelming. All you can see is shop after shop and people everywhere.

My last day in Seoul I got up early and headed to Namsam Mountain. I took the cable car to the top of the mountain where N Seoul Tower is located. The observation deck is the highest point in Seoul. After a while looking around and staring at the vast city, I ventured down to my next location. Next stop: Korea War Memorial in the foreigner district Itaewon. This might have been my favorite stop on my trip because I'm a history nerd. The museum took the vistitor on a trip through Korean military actions from early civilization through the modern day.

After that, I headed out and caught an evening train bound for Daegu. All in all, a good trip.