Weekend in Seoul (Part 1)

Okay, so I'm a little later than I had planned with the results of our weekend in Seoul, but that's because Shan and I have been sick basically since we got back. Now, without any further ado, here's a recap of Day 1 of our trip:

First things first - Seoul is HUGE!!!!! In the two days we were there, we stayed only in the center part of the city, and at times it still took us a half hour or more on the subway to get where we wanted to go.

We traveled to Seoul via the high-speed train (which was everything I expected it to be and more), and met up with Lorie and Laura at the train station. From there, we headed on over to Gyeongbok Palace (경복국), where we arrived just in time to witness the changing of the guard. This involved traditional Korean costumes, weapons, musical instruments, and a LOT of spectators! It was pretty awesome, especially for our first experience in Seoul.

After exploring the palace grounds, we made our way to Insa-dong, where we had lunch at an awesome mandu (만두) shop, where the dumplings are so big that you've actually got to cut them apart with your spoon to eat them - and they were delicious! We wandered around the market for a little while and did a little shopping before going to Namdaemun (남대문) market where I did in fact get to check out the camera market area, which was cool, but not nearly as big as the internets made it out to be. Don't get me wrong, there were a lot of shops, and they all had LOTS of awesome stuff, but I was expecting a long street with both sides lined with shops of awesomeness. Instead it was one side of a short stretch of street that had said awesome-filled shops. It took me a little bit of searching, but I found what I had come for: a TTL cord for my flash, and a good, solid tripod.

It was starting to get on toward supper time by this point, so we decided it was time for a little riverboat cruise. Laura had been on this cruise a few times before with some of her students, so we followed her lead in getting to the docks, but it turns out we got off at the wrong subway stop, because we had to walk a LOT farther than anyone had anticipated to get there. Fortunately, the cruise was well worth the walk, and we got to enjoy a nice relaxing trip up and down the river, and even found out that we were really close to the church we were planning to go to the next day, and that there was a hotel right next to it that we could stay at. Oh, and did I mention that the riverboat was a pirate ship? Pure awesome!After the cruise, it was getting pretty late, so we found our way to the hotel and packed it in for the night, intending to get up for an early service at the church and another full day of exploring.

Coming up soon, Day 2 of our Seoul Adventure, which will be spread out over this blog and mine, as I'll post a recap of the service at Yoido Full Gospel Church there, as well as my impressions of the largest church in the world.