Day Seven

We were going to take the bullet train out on Sunday, but we were essentially laughed at when we mentioned the plan at dinner on Saturday night. Thus, we had to come up with something else. We figured that because we had been in Seoul for about a week and had not seen any of Seoul's palaces, it would be a good day for palace hopping. The next, somewhat important question, then became which palace. I threw out Gyeongbokgung Palace, but we decided on Changdeokgung. Then, we stepped outside into this blistering hot weather and melted on a trip to the subway. This was made worse by the fact that there are about twelve Susaek stops on the way to the subway station and we got off on the wrong one. Anyway, the heat inspired us to go to Gyeongbokgung as initially planned only because it is surrounded by air conditioned museums whereas Changdeokgung does not.

Our first stop on this sightseeing tour was the Palace Museum. I wanted to see this last time I was here, but it was being renovated or something, so it wasn't open. Fortunately for our large group, the palace museum was celebrating its 100th year or something, so it has free admission for 2009. It was a pretty interesting musem. A lot of kings' seals. Pretty clothes. Medical stuff. Some pots that they recovered from a shipwreck and found in 2007-ish. (That was actually a super cool exhibit). We wanted to catch the 1:30 English tour of Gyongbokgung, so we were only there for about an hour. I believe we left an entire floor unexplored.







We left the Palace Museum just in time to see the changing of the guard in front of Gyeongbokgung Palace. Auntie Maureen said that it's okay that we didn't see the whole thing as it's super long. If we had to stay outside in the heat to watch the whole thing we might have melted. Yes, it was that hot. We took a couple of pictures next to them afterwards.







We made it to the tour meeting spot with a lot of time to spare, meaning we huddled in shade hoping to cool down. For a bit of history, Gyeonbokgung Palace is a palace in Seoul that was constructed during the Joseon dynasty. I think it's supposed to be the largest of the palaces in Seoul and was the main palace when it was actually up. It was destroyed during the Japanese invasion during the 1500s and then reconstructed in the 1800s. When the Japanese invaded in the 1911, most of the buildings were again destroyed. It's a very pretty palace and they do the changing of the guard in it.

Anyway, our tour was interesting. Our tour guide was very nice, but spoke very broken English, so it was hard to understand her. I think I might have been better off doing a Korean tour. At some point we had a debate over whether she said the dragon on the ceiling had seven colors or claws because we couldn't tell. She also had a tendency to stand in the hottest areas of the palace and have us gather around. Thus, we were also dying of hot. I'm sure it was a nice tour, but we escaped about halfway through to find air conditioning.











We escaped to the National Folk Museum. By this time we were so delirious from the heat, that we were referring to the zodiac dog statue as Bruce.



The moment we got in there, we sat around in the air conditioned room for a while. It felt nice. We got ice cream. It was so hot outside.

We looked around the museum. They've really done a lot to it since Gianni and I went two years ago. The set up flows a lot better now so you're moving from one exhibit to the next without feeling like you've gone that far. They've also put in a lot of very fun interactive displays. I approve of the changes. Because of the heat, however, we kind of walked through the museum on zombies until we had to put together some interactive display on food. Food always brings our family back to life.

You know what I thought was really cool? The movable print blocks from like forever and a half ago!



Another highlight of the museum was when some interactive computer display on the Korean alphabet malfunctioned and went to the desktop screen. This was the screen that displayed on the wall. My dweebus brother spent a while trying to rick roll the museum. He gave up and played minesweeper with Mia.





Also there was an exhibit on kimchi making.







They also just recently opened the Children's Museum there. I think they had a children's section to the folk museum before because I remember playing with things in there with Gianni and getting glared at by little Korean children. That was fun. Anyway, they've fixed it up very nicely now. It all follows a famous Korean story about this woman and her blind father. Forgot the name of the story. You actually have to have reservations to go in and it's only for very little kids, but because we were very obviously foreign tourists, they let us walk through. We weren't supposed to go play with the exhibits, but with all the slides and spinny things, it was very tempting.

After the Children's Museum, we had to go out and brave the heat. Another big change to this whole museum set up was the old outer area. They set up this old town outside. It was cool.

James also wanted me to tell everyone that he has a fun picture hugging a statue.





After the Folk Museum we made our way to Insadong and grabbed some ice cream along the way. Watch out for our ice cream tab because we managed to beat a previously held trip record in terms of daily ice cream intake.

I love Insadong. It's a little neighborhood with tiny shops, street vendors and cafes. At some time it was the go-to spot for folk art, crafts and antiques in Seoul. It's a huge, huge tourist spot, so it's always pretty crowded. According to Auntie Maureen, who met us there, it was actually not that crowded for a Sunday night...probably because of the heat. I don't know about that, it was still pretty crowded.







It's a fun place to walk around and shop. A definite fun stop was this little street vendor booth where they made this court candy by spinning around honey into little strings. They were extremely entertaining to watch because they would say "wow" a lot. I took a video of it, but it's pretty big so I'm having issues posting it. It's one of the ones I've been trying to post actually. I'll get it up eventually.





We ate dinner there and wandered around quite a bit. It's a fun place to be at night.





We left around 9 probably and took the bus back to the DMC area. However, due to a mix up in translating the directions Auntie Maureen gave us from English to Garbagnati, we ended up at the wrong Susaek stop (nice way to book end a day) and most of us took a taxi back while Umma went on some adventure to make her way back. Oh but we did have Red Mango before we left. Told you we beat our previous record.

And now I end this entry with some royal angst.