But after that, I had a heck of a day with some friends just walking all over Seoul. We took the subway to the City Hall station (시청역) and explored the one palace I hadn't yet had the chance to explore: Deoksugung (덕수궁). It's the smallest of the three palaces, and its...unique location right next to the bustling city provides a rather interesting, if a bit distracting, juxtaposition between traditional and modern. While the palace itself is a great example of the traditional era, you can see the skylines lined by the Seoul high-rise buildings:
And that's not even the main throne room, either. Apparently Sejong the Great lived in Deoksugung at one point, although they moved him out of there because it was too small. Something like that, I can't remember. I will say, though, that they tricked me while we were here...we heard traditional music coming from the main courtyard. I thought someone was actually playing, but it turns out it was a sound system all along. Sigh...
From Deoksugung, we made our way further down the street and found the smallest river I've ever seen. See? Look between the white dotted lines...
OK, so it's not really a river, but this pavement nuisance connects to what's called Cheonggyecheon (청계천), which eventually connects to the Han River a little further downstream. While the New Orleanian in me wanted to say it's a glorified, much better-looking version of the many canals in the city, it's also somewhat of a park, as tourists and residents (especially couples) like to walk along the riverbank. Further down from where it starts, it becomes more of a forest along a river:
We also saw a rather neat light/laser show as it was getting dark in the area. (7/7 EDIT: You can, too, if you click here.)
From Cheonggyecheon, we actually caved and had the equivalent of the Korean McDonald's, called "Lotteria" (롯데리아, which is apparently headquartered in Japan--who knew?). Somehow, the taste of bulgogi while a burger didn't quite resonate with me...I suppose it could've been worse, the shrimp burger sounded even stranger. Suffice it to say there's better food out there (as if I needed to say that!), although this was just to say we did it.
After dinner we paraded down Sejong-ro, the main boulevard that eventually leads to Gyeongbokgung (the biggest palace in Seoul). Along the way, we found a giant statue of, naturally, King Sejong. What we didn't realize was that there was a huge museum underneath the statue. We also found a neat little corner where little kids could draw their dreams on little squares on paper, to be pasted to woodblocks and displayed on the walls, like so:
What we weren't expecting, however, was Matt (our token white guy) getting mobbed by a bunch of Korean schoolgirls. All of a sudden, he was the most popular guy in the room, taking pictures with all the girls!
Hey, I'm an American guy too! How come you aren't clamoring to take a picture with me?
...oh, that's why.
We taxied back to E-dae without much trouble (although I still wonder how Matt's taxi got there before mine did, considering he took the second one...but did he get the cheaper one?).
Although here's the thing about being a guy staying at a women's university: when you come through the gates at 10:30 at night, I suppose the guards automatically assume you're up to no good. They stopped me at the gate to verify that I was actually a student--I flashed the key card and was waved through without any problems, although that's not to say I was scared out of my wits during the brief moment I was stopped.
They don't regulate people this much at 'SC, lemme tell you!
Joshua,
ReplyDeleteThere is two kinds of taxis. One is regular and the other one private one or 모범 택시(as I recall, it is usually black color taxi).
모범 택시 tends to be more expensive in its fare.
Dad