Exploring Seoul (Day #.5)

Yeah, you read that right - .5! I have so much to write about, and we were back at our hotel by NOON!

We woke up early again, about 4am, and decided to get our day started at about 6am at a certain coffee shop that has 3 floors. We were so excited to watch the sunrise over Seoul as we sipped our lattes. 

We were so disappointed when we got the the coffee shop and learned that it didn't open until 9am! NINE! A.M.! What kind of city is this?! LOL! We immediately checked all of the surrounding coffee shops (there is a ridiculous amount of coffee shops in Seoul), and they also didn't open until 9am. WHAAAAT? Luckily, McD's was open 24/7, and they have lattes. Crisis averted. 

We were also going to eat there for breakfast, but then we walked past this street vendor and decided to give it a try. It smelled so good! Basically, it was an omelette sandwich, and it was yummy.

Next, we took the subway to the station that got us as close as possible to Namsan, a touristy mountain in Seoul. There's a tower and other cool things at the top. 

When we looked up directions to Namsan on the internet, it told us to get off at a certain subway station and "walk 30 minutes." So that's what we did. We got off the subway, saw the tower at the top of the mountain in the distance and started walking, carefully taking notes on which buildings we saw on the way so we could make our way back. Here is what the tower looked like from the subway station:

We managed to get there pretty easily, and started hiking up. There are about a million stairs to walk up, yes, one million. Or at least that's what it felt like!

It was totally worth the pain, however, and here are some of the things we saw along the way:

Rocks with writing on them. Not sure what they said, but they sure looked cool!

A pretty garden area. 

A place to work out (as if the hike up the stairs wasn't enough)! 

Amazing views of Seoul.

And this older woman, who by the end of the hike had passed us up and beat us up the mountain! Whew, we need to get more exercise!

When we got to the top, guess what, we were too early and everything was closed! Hah! I'm sensing a theme here. Well there was plenty to look at. Check these out:

Ryan and I thought that maybe it was some sort of clever, artsy recycling project, but then we learned it was much, much more (click on the picture to make it bigger):

TEAR!!!

We decided we wanted our newly expanded family to be a permanent part of the love-fest, so we headed to the gift store (after it finally opened) and bought a lock with three keys (one for each of us). We wrote our names, Ryan, Jen, and Alex on the lock, along with the date, and added it to one of the lock trees. How cool would it be to come back years later and find our lock! (I only have video of our lock, not pictures, so I'll see about adding a video to this post later.)

After placing our lock, we saw that the tower was open for business! Yay! So we bought our tickets and went up into the tower. Here are some of the sights from the tower (LOVE that they included distances to other places around the world):

After the tower (yes there's more), we were going to head to Insadong Market, which is supposed to have a lot of traditional Korean stuff, but we happened to run into this market on the way back to the subway, so we're saving Insadong for another day:

We wondered around a bit and realized we wanted to stay for awhile, but we were hungry so we found a little Koren place with an English menu. We ordered kimchi fried rice for lunch. 

It was mostly good, but also a little different. Sometimes it's mentally difficult to get past what you are eating, even if it tastes good! 

Even though we went the slightly adventurous route with lunch, we still passed on this interesting sounding dish:

I don't think I could have mentally gotten past that one!

After lunch we headed back to the market and got all sorts of cool things, including future gifts for Alex and a Hanbok (traditional Korean outfit) for his 2nd birthday!

Finally, we just couldn't take anymore. Our legs and feet were killing us! Somehow, we amazingly made it back to our subway station without getting lost. We felt like the whole day had passed, but it was only noon! Now we are back at our hotel. I am writing this blog post while Ryan naps (jealous!!!). 

So that was our first half day of exploring Seoul. I'll write a more about the second half later (if we manage to find the energy for it)!