See all the things! Part 2: City Tour Bus

As part of our time in Seoul, we decided to spend a day hitting multiple things and decided that the hop on, hop off city tour bus would be an easier way to find things than taking the subway - faster and air conditioned, less stress trying to find locations of things. Yeah... it didn't quite work out that way... but whatever.

After getting our tickets and hopping on at Gwanghwamun, we decided our first stop would be the Korean War Memorial. We were dropped off on the side of a busy road and left to find it on our own. Word to the wise: there are NO SIGNS in English for the memorial. Just FYI. We wandered for about 30 minutes before asking a security looking guy near where we were dropped off who pointed us towards a big arched sign in Korean that led to a deserted and very official looking parking lot where we found a guy who pointed us in the right direction of another official looking building where we finally climbed a bunch of stairs to walk down a lovely corridor filled with names of foreign soldiers who died in the Korean war. There was a statue of some kind as well and a small cafe.

See this? Now you know you are there. 

The view outside

We had wandered so much that we missed our bus so we had to hang out until the next one. We got something to drink, some ice cream, and then headed out so we would get to the bus at the time the schedule we had seen posted at the bus stop said it would be there (which, by the way, was a different time than the schedule we had been given when we bought our tickets). Of course, the bus just kind of comes when it wants to, anyways, so it didn't really matter what schedule we looked at. That's fun, too.

Then it was off to our next stop: the National History Museum! At this point we realized two things: 1) We've learned a lot of Korean History from watching historical Korean dramas, and 2) We know very little about Korean history. Solution? More dramas, of course!

The museum is beautiful and free (an added bonus). We wandered a bit before we realized we were both fading and in dire need of sustenance. After some foods and more wandering of the museum, we decided to move on to our next stop on our adventure.

This stop was the hanok village. A hanok is a traditional Korean house. There is supposed to be this neighborhood you can walk around and admire the lovely houses, but I think where we went wasn't that. Wherever we went, it was fun anyways. We got to wander around some traditional house grounds and see the pretty architecture.

This is also where we saw the doctor, which I was remiss in saying was at the palace in my last post (oops!).

Mindy takin' some pictures

The BESTEST part of this stop was that we got there just in time to see a taekwondo demonstration. We came in after they had brought up some audience volunteers to break some boards. One lady had a dress on and they showed her how to kick and when she went to do it the guy threw himself in front of her so people wouldn't see up her dress. Good job, dude. Suuuper funny. But the guy broke his board so, good job!

After that, they got up and did a big presentation onstage. Now, I got to see a lot of taekwondo when I was in high school because I would often take my sister, Jesi, to taekwondo practice. But THIS was an entirely different sort of demo. This was one of those, "Let's be impressive and show off our action movie moves" kind of demos. They did crazy flips and multiple board breaks where they would run and jump off of someone's back to get to a crazy high board. Very cool.

There was also a dance which was really cute. It was like this guy trying to meditate and this girl comes out and is teasing him and when he tries to catch her she makes him look all clumsy and adorable. Loved it.

Cute AND funny!

After the performance and a bit of wandering, we decided to head back to the bus. We had plans to hit up a palace, but, unfortunately, they were all closed for the day. That was fine with me, because I was fading fast. I was still jet lagged and it had been a long, HOT day. We got back to the guesthouse and Mindy guided me to dinner (we grabbed some spicy chicken with tater tots and deok (chewy rice cake) from a street vendor) and we fell asleep watching dramas... ok. I fell asleep and Mindy turned off the drama and said I needed to go to bed. Whatever.

Next up is the final installment of "See all the things!" with our trip to Jeju-do!